


Just Hold On, We're Going Home

by skytraveller



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual Smut, F/M, Luke Skywalker exerts his will from the Great Beyond, Rating May Change, Romance, Slow Burn, Space Babies in New York
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-03-05 21:38:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13396749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skytraveller/pseuds/skytraveller
Summary: When he’d read the nameRey Jakkenon his uncle’s will, he’d pictured some middle-aged hippie yoga instructor living in an apartment with several cats and probably an excess of decorative pinwheels and wind chimes. Maybe a prayer mat or two. She’d probably met Luke at Burning Man or some ayahuasca ceremony in someone’s basement, and, in whatever drug-addled haze, had somehow convinced the lonely old man that theUniverseor thePowers-That-Bewanted him to leave her a multi-million-dollar piece of prime real estate in upstate New York.That, or she was a hooker.-Or: A Modern Day AU in which Luke trolls his nefarious nephew from the Great Beyond





	1. Where There's A Will

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there!
> 
> So, this started off as an attempt to write a Christmas Carol AU, but then, it kind of... got away from me. 
> 
> therewasanattempt.jpg

A leather office chair soared across the room, slamming into tall, crystalline windows that rippled with the force of the impact, but otherwise stood intact and uncracked. 

 

Kylo Ren glared at the jagged angles and sloping steel that composed the Manhattan skyline and at the gathering grey clouds that heralded the late-December snowstorm, wishing for a moment that he could leap into the center of it and disappear. Or fall to his death. Or be electrocuted. He couldn’t decide. The chair fell to the floor with a clatter, a single wheel still spinning on its axis.

 

Hux was—as usual—decidedly _not_ impressed, the man’s pale face drawn and pinched in blatant distaste. “If you’re _quite_ finished—”

 

He wasn’t. The room was sparsely furnished with only one long conference table and two chairs. The table was too big to lift, even for Kylo, and bolted to the floor. He’d already thrown his own chair. Briefly, he considered forcibly removing the other man from the other and throwing it too before thinking better of it.

 

He settled for the glass of water instead; this one shattered satisfyingly into a million tiny shards across the carpeted floor. Undoubtedly, some unfortunate member of _First Order Records_ sanitation crew would have to vacuum it up later. Hux would likely make them get down on their knees and take a magnifying glass to make doubly sure they got every last sliver. God forbid they ruin the soles of his Swiss calf leather shoes.

 

Destroying things usually made him feel better, but, recently, it hadn’t been working. His fists clenched at his side, the anger—white-hot and always simmering just below the surface—swirled inside him like the blizzard gathering outside, only, it didn’t have any place to go. His breathing came in hard puffs as Kylo ran a shaky hand through his unwashed hair.

 

Hux raised a single brow, long used to his client’s mercurial mood swings, hands smoothing over the stack of papers in front of him. The top page—a photocopy of slanted script scribbled on what looked like a torn piece of paper towel—caught Kylo’s eye. He knew at once what it was: his uncle’s last will and testament, drawn up a measly two hours before the man had drawn his last breath in a hospital in _Jersey_ of all places, and the doctors declared him dead. The very last thing Luke Skywalker had ever written.

 

Hux drummed his fingers across the page, impatient as ever to get on with it. He was a very busy man, after all, and there were interns to terrify. “ _As_ I was saying… there may be a simple solution to this conundrum we find ourselves in.”

 

The look Kylo shot him was scathing. “ _We_?”

 

“Of course,” Hux said, as if he were very slow. “All matters concerning you also concern the First Order _._ This…” He tapped the offending document with a single, manicured finger. “If this gets out—”

 

“It won’t _._ ”

 

“—there will be hell to pay in the inevitable PR shitstorm—“

 

“It _won’t._ ”

 

“— _and,_ more importantly, it will reflect poorly on upper management.”

 

“You can _inform_ upper management that I have everything under control,” Kylo managed to grind out between clenched teeth.

 

“Really?” Hux had a way of turning the most innocuous phrases into acid. “Have you spoken with your mother?”

 

His stomach churned uncomfortably, but his exterior remained sullen and cold. “The Senator is too busy campaigning for re-election.”

 

Hux raised an eyebrow. “The election was in November. Her seat’s secure for another six years.”

 

Kylo merely shrugged. “Fundraising, then.”

 

“Ah, and how is that coming along?”

 

“I wouldn’t know.” Kylo stalked over to right his chair, rolling it back to the table and collapsing into it, arms folded across his chest. “You can ask her PA.”

 

“So, you _haven’t_ spoken to her.”

 

“No.” Jaw clenching, Kylo returned his agent’s pointed look with a scowl. “I don’t see why you can’t do it.”

 

“I _tried,_ ” Hux sniffed, as if it were so very far beneath him to deal with such family squabbles. He _was_ an agent of the First Order, after all; though most talent agents didn’t also possess a degree in law, it had proved useful on more than one occasion. Especially when considering the bulk of his work centered around a certain moody artist type with a proclivity for violence. “She made it quite clear that she would only speak to _you._ ”

 

“I’m not calling her.” Kylo stared past the man’s ginger coif and out the window, the bleak view matching his mood.

 

The sigh that escaped from Hux was longsuffering and filled with irritation. “I thought you might say that…”  

 

“Then next time don’t waste your breath.”

 

“…which is why I took the liberty of RSVP-ing you for her Christmas Charity Gala,” Hux finished, eyebrows raising in challenge to the explosive rebuttal that was undoubtedly—

 

“You _what?!_ ”

 

Hux continued as if he were discussing the latest stock trends over espresso. “It’s to be held in two days at the Palace Hotel on Christmas Eve. I’ve already arranged for your stylist to—”

 

“Fuck no. I’m not going.”

 

“—meet you at the penthouse at five.”

 

“Whatever. I won’t be there.”

 

“I have my orders from Mr. Snoke himself,” Hux said, features twisting into a look of smug triumph. “After _I_ suggested the idea to him, he agreed that it would be in _our_ best interests for you to attend.” Clearly, he’d been waiting for the opportunity to say this. “I’d advise you not to disappoint him.”

 

 _What?_ Kylo narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Why wasn’t I informed of this earlier?”

 

Hux’s tone was wry. “And how were we supposed to contact you, exactly? By post? Should I have arranged for a psychic to send you a message through the universal medium?” Hux put the papers back into their manila folder and stood up, tucking it neatly under his arm. “Check your phone.”

 

“I don’t have it,” was his deadpan reply. It was sitting at the bottom of his sock drawer, switched off, as it had been for weeks. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at it, not since…

 

“Well, then go get it,” came Hux’s snappish reply. The man was turning to leave, hand on the door, but couldn’t resist throwing one final barb over his shoulder. “It’s time to grow up, Ren. Think of it this way: if you don’t make a public appearance soon, people might start thinking you actually _cared_ about him.”

 

Hux was halfway down the hall when Kylo called after him. “Wait.”

 

The red-haired man turned around, schooling his expression to one of pained almost-but-not-quite-deference in the presence of others, though he could not keep his upper lip from curling as he answered through clenched teeth, “ _Yes_?”

 

Kylo held out his hand expectantly. “Give me a copy of that.”

 

*   *   *

 

Hux had summarily refused to give him a copy, launching into a longwinded lecture filled with legal terms that Kylo didn’t understand—some of which he was certain were made up—before finally remarking snidely that he could not be trusted and that he didn’t want to wake up on Christmas Day to see it plastered all over page six.

 

“It’s _my_ uncle’s last fucking wishes and I’m a beneficiary,” Kylo had argued. “I have a _right_ to see it.”

 

He had not bothered asking how Hux had gotten his hands on it; first of all, he didn’t care, and second of all, he just really, _really_ didn’t care.

 

Hux’s answer had been positively gleeful. “No. The beneficiary listed here is _‘Benjamin Solo.’_ And until you get your birth and name change certificate— _you know, the one you had shipped to Senator Organa out of spite_ —then this document has nothing to do with you.”

 

But Kylo, not being one to take ‘no’ for an answer, had resorted to dirty tactics, and after threatening to tell Phasma about a particular incident with a certain famous popstar after last year’s Grammy’s, a purple-faced Hux had agreed to let him _see_ it. Supervised. For five minutes.

 

Then, he’d frowned when he saw Kylo snatch a yellow post-it from some gawking intern’s desk.

 

“What are you…” he’d trailed off as he realized what his client was scribbling. “ _Mr. Ren,”_ he’d hissed out. “As your agent _and_ attorney, I must strongly advise _against_ this course of _—_ ”

 

“Duly noted.”

 

Though, as usual whenever Hux spoke, Kylo had stopped listening half way through the man’s tirade. Folding the paper and shoving it into the back pocket of his jeans, he’d clapped the scowling man on the shoulder with more force than necessary, threw him a glib ‘thanks for all your hard work,’ and slipped into the elevator as it dinged. Hux’s red face was the last thing he saw before the doors closed. 

 

Downstairs, his chauffeur, Mitaka, was waiting for him. But, where he was going, the Royce would’ve been too flashy, so he dismissed the man for the evening, hailed a cab, and barked out the address to the driver—an older gentleman who spoke little English and probably had no idea who he was, but asked for his autograph anyway after seeing him stalk out of the First Order scraper.

 

So, after settling into the backseat of the musty-smelling cab and avoiding the mystery stains covering the entire left side, there was nothing to do but sit and stew, mulling over the answers that he would demand.

 

_What were you to Luke Skywalker?_

_How did you trick him?_

_Why is he leaving the Mustafar property to you?_

_Who the_ fuck _do you think you are?_

 

It was only about an eight-mile drive from Manhattan to Brooklyn, but, as it was three days before Christmas, it took nearly an hour just to make it to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and another hour to make it to Bushwick. His leg shook impatiently the whole time he sat in the cramped backseat, watching the blur of the city bathed in cold, wintry sunset passing by.

 

By the time they arrived, two and a half hours later, he’d worked himself back up to fuming mad. Tossing the cabbie a crumpled hundred dollar bill and muttering for him to keep the change, he stepped out onto the frigid gum littered streets.

 

As it turned out, 4747 Nima Street was a laundromat, and exactly as dingy and disappointing as he’d expected it to be. The dilapidated façade—a faded brick-red five-story that was crumbling along the edges, like the other ones on the block—had clearly seen better days. He’d have to go inside to get to the levels above. There was no buzzer or gate in front of the stairs, and the laundromat owner—an oily-faced, blubbery, water-logged looking fellow with swollen fingers and a bulbous nose—ignored Kylo as he passed, eyeing his empty hands before returning to his horseracing magazine.

 

He found the place easily enough, at the end of the hall on the third floor. Removing his sunglasses and beanie—because this was to be an encounter where he _wanted_ his disreputable reputation to precede him—he smoothed a hand through his hair.

 

Gloved fist poised next to the faded and chipping orange paint that read ‘B-8,’ he started banging on the door.

 

From the other side, he heard a woman’s voice swear—loudly and rather colorfully, he thought he heard the words ‘ _bloody’_ and ‘ _wanker’_ uttered in quick succession—before stomping footfalls approached.

 

“Teedo, I swear to _god_ ,” she was already saying, distinctly irritated and accented _,_ as the door swung open. “For the last time, _no,_ I haven’t seen your ca—”

 

The word ended in a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a squeak. Her eyes widening in surprise, the resident of apartment B-8 craned her neck up to look at him, frozen in place.

 

To her credit, Kylo did not fare much better. He stared down at her in abject horror, only distantly aware that his mouth was hanging open.

 

“Oh,” she spoke first, swallowing. His eyes dropped to watched her throat move before dragging his gaze up to where white teeth worried into a pink bottom lip, and finally to back to her eyes, bright and wary. “You’re not Teedo.”

 

Kylo gulped, his arm, still poised to knock, dropping limply to his side.

 

All the scenarios he’d made up in his head could not have prepared him for this.

 

This was so, so, _so_ much worse than he’d imagined.


	2. But You Run Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there!
> 
> Oh my goodness, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for your response to the first chapter!! :') I was so giddy reading all of your comments. I hope I can continue to deliver! 
> 
> I have this written out to about chapter 5-6 so far, so I HOPE I can continue to stay ahead. Also, I've been holding onto this since November/December so I think I just need to LET GO. 
> 
> Without further ado, here is the next installment!

Ben Solo had never been very good with people. This was not an opinion, but a fact.

 

He’d lacked the grace that seemed to flow from his mother like water from an endless stream. After all, it was the job of every good senator to say and do the right thing. Even as a boy, although he didn’t understand irony just yet, he’d understood that there was something odd about a woman like that having a son like him.

 

“ _That’s because you take after your father,”_ the Senator would sigh, a gentle hand in his hair and a smile that reached her eyes less and less with every time he brought home a yellow slip for parent signature, every time he showed up to dinner with a new cut on his lip or scrapes on his knees and fists, or every time the teachers called wanting to schedule a conference to discuss Ben’s _… behavior._

 

It was always said like that. With a pause.

 

His mother had never meant it as a compliment, but all young boys want to be like their fathers at some point, and so Ben had always beamed under the praise.

 

And yes, while it was true that the legend known as Han Solo had alienated a fair amount of people in life with his brash and impulsive behavior—mostly smuggling and swindling, though he’d also dabbled in extortion, embezzlement, fraud, and stars know what else—it was also true that he had a certain magnetic charm that made it difficult for people to _stay_ mad at him.

 

(Unfortunately, Ben Solo had learned at fifteen—gangly, long-faced, big-eared, and _geez, Solo, can’t you take a joke?_ —he didn’t have much in the way of _charm_ either.)

 

Of course, Leia Organa had found a way to forgive her ex-husband, all those years ago when the circling vultures sunk their claws into all the dirty laundry that came tumbling out of the woodwork in the wake of the _Millennium Falcon,_ a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, disappearing over the Arctic—cargo, crew, and all.

 

They’d even held a funeral for him, months later, after the search parties gave up when the weather took a sharp turn for the worse, a ribald affair where politicians and criminals gathered together on a dreary, rainy day in February to lower an empty casket into the ground.

 

Or, so he was told.

 

Now, it was a different story. On stage—there, in front of a sea of sweat-soaked, undulating bodies, amidst the frenzied screams and chants reaching a fever-pitch with the first reverberating chord from the cherry red Stratocaster tucked against his hip, bright lights making him see stars, casting a shadow larger than life—

 

— _Kylo, Kylo, Kylo—_

 

—there, he could forget about Ben Solo, the awkward, graceless boy without a charming bone in his body—

 

—there, he could pretend—

 

—no—there, he _was_ —someone else.

 

*   *   *

 

All things considered, it was almost funny how much he felt like a hapless teenager once again, in this moment, when confronted with an actual, probable teenager.

 

Almost.

 

“Can I help you?”

 

The girl was glaring up at him with blatant mistrust written in her narrowed eyes. Kylo snapped his gaping mouth shut, clearing his throat awkwardly. He didn’t feel like laughing.

 

When he’d read the name _Rey Jakken_ on his uncle’s will, he’d pictured some middle-aged hippie yoga instructor living in an apartment with several cats and probably an excess of decorative pinwheels and wind chimes. Maybe a prayer mat or two. She’d probably met Luke at Burning Man or some ayahuasca ceremony in someone’s basement, and, in whatever drug-addled haze, had somehow convinced the lonely old man that _the Universe_ or the _Powers-That-Be_ wanted him to leave her a multi-million-dollar piece of prime real estate in upstate New York.

 

That, or she was a hooker.

 

Frankly, he’d still been deciding which one was worse. It had been a toss-up between either option up until the point where the door swung open, and Kylo was left face-to-face with the reality that was staring right back at him with increasing apprehension as the seconds of heavy silence ticked by.

 

He had not been expecting _this._

 

Fucking hell, she looked _young._ A student, and one who couldn’t afford to do laundry despite living above a laundromat, if the grease-and-marinara-stained NYU sweater she wore over seasonally inappropriate, hole-riddled jeans were any indication. Her hair, a shiny chestnut brown, was pulled back tightly from her face in a single bun atop her head, accentuating the sharpness of her features as well as the sharpness of her _glare._

 

Kylo forgot his questions, the _who, what, when, where, why,_ and _how’s_ that had seemed so important to him on the ride over. Now, they took a backseat to the churning of his stomach. The implications of it all hit him in a barrage, all at once.

 

_She’s so young._

 

Was she even old enough to drink? Gamble? _Vote?_

If she went to NYU, then she definitely voted for his mother. Kylo swatted the wayward thought away like a fly.

 

His uncle, fifty-five years old at the time of his untimely death, and _her—_ no, that one was even worse.

 

The silence had long surpassed what was socially acceptable. He could see it in the way her fingers tightened around the door and the way she stepped behind it slightly, as if ready to slam it in his face.

 

Then, something flickered in those big not-quite-brown-not-quite-green eyes of hers. Kylo knew that look, had seen it before in a million star-struck teenagers, and knew what usually came next. The thought of her recognizing him now only intensified the sick feeling in his stomach.

 

She opened her mouth to speak again, but he was quick to cut her off. With a quickly muttered, “Sorry, wrong address,” he turned on his heel and walked away, down the stairs, past the blubbery laundromat owner, and out onto the quickly darkening streets.

 

It was cold, the leather jacket he was wearing doing little to keep out the chill, and his breath misted before him. Shoving his beanie back over his head, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and kept walking.

 

Twenty blocks later, it started to snow. Kylo looked up and realized that he was hopelessly lost.

 

*   *   *

 

Rey stood in her doorway, completely bewildered, for a full two minutes after the tall, dark, and broodsome stranger lurched way like a wraith after their silent staring contest, during which she’d been surreptitiously inching closer to the aluminum baseball bat she kept next to the door. Just in case.

 

He had looked vaguely familiar, and she’d been about to ask him if she’d maybe seen him around campus, but she didn’t know how that could be. The man was freakishly tall and Rey was certain that she’d remember a face like that.

 

Oh, well. It wasn't like she would ever see him again.

 

Then, as she was about to close the door and bolt it for good measure, she spotted something on the floor in the middle of the hallway.

 

*   *   *

 

“I’ll give you a hundred for ten quarters,” Kylo bargained with the homeless man bundled up on the street corner. He didn’t have his cell phone and he never carried change. It wasn’t _seemly_ to jangle, his mother had always said. Stars only knew why _that_ particular lesson stuck with him throughout the years. “And a cigarette, if you’ve got one.”

 

The man narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Are you serious?”

 

“Yeah,” Kylo said, fumbling through his pockets for his wallet. He checked the pockets of his jeans, and then his jacket. “Shit.” It wasn’t there. “Shitshitshit— _fucker—_ uh, fuck, here, take this instead.” He unclasped his watch and handed it over.

 

The man stared at it, then cast Kylo an incredulous look. “This is a Rolex.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Looks real.”

 

Kylo shrugged. “It is real.”

 

The man didn’t argue again, handing over a Starbucks cup filled with coins, an entire pack of cigarettes, and a lighter, and started to pack up his things, probably about to head over to the 24/7 pawn shop around the corner. Kylo took his spoils and went to the payphone. He set the cup atop of the box and, after slotting in the twenty-five cents, dialed the only number he knew by heart.

 

Receiver cradled between his chin and shoulder, he reached for a cig, placing one between his lips, lighting it, and blowing out a mouthful of smoke into the air, watching it rise between the flakes of falling snow.

 

The line rang once, twice, and after the fifth ring, it went to voicemail. Kylo placed the phone back on the hook, taking another drag with fingers that he told himself were shaking from the cold.

 

It was just as well. He wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway.

 

*   *   *

 

It’d taken him an embarrassingly long time to remember how to call an operator and after two connections and five minutes of listening to Hux lecture and prod him for details, he’d stood on the corner and smoked the rest of the pack before Mitaka finally pulled up in an inconspicuous black hybrid.

 

By the time he got back to the penthouse in Manhattan, it was half past ten, and the first thing he did was pour himself a double of whisky neat, tossing back the glass in one go, relishing the way the liquid burned his esophagus on the way down, entering his veins and chasing the chill from his half-frozen limbs.

 

He’d barely settled on the couch when the phone rang, his ire spiking through the dampening effect of the alcohol. He had a quota for how many unwanted conversations he could have in one day, and Kylo had reached it. He didn’t have to glance at the caller ID to know who it was.

 

“Jesus Christ, Hux,” he barked into the receiver without bothering with pleasantries. “Do you have cameras in here or something?” He wouldn’t put it past the sniveling deviant.

 

“I asked your doorman to text me when you arrived,” Hux explained, impatient.

 

“You bribed my doorman?”

 

“That’s not what I said,” Hux hedged, but didn’t correct him. “Now, tell me everything.”

 

Kylo sat back on the couch and poured himself another generous glass, sipping it. “Well, my favorite color is red, I’m a Scorpio—”

 

“About the _girl,_ you insufferable—” Kylo pulled the receiver away as a string of expletives sounded off next to his ear.

 

“Do you talk to all your clients this way? Or just the ones you like?”

 

“I need to know if I should be expecting a restraining order to show up on my desk,” Hux replied waspishly.

 

“No.”

 

“No?” The disbelief was evident in his tone. “I need to know what you did and said, _exactly,_ play by play, word for word.” There was a pause, then a calm, perfunctory, “Did you threaten her?”

 

“No,” Kylo repeated flatly, refusing to elaborate further.

 

There was a pause. “Are you sure _?”_

 

“Hm, yeah, pretty sure, seeing as I was there and you weren’t _._ ”

 

There was a scoffing sound in his ear. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

 

“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” Kylo bit back sarcastically, rolling his eyes even though Hux couldn’t see. “It’s Christmas.”

 

“I’m Catholic,” Hux countered flatly. “And that didn’t seem to concern you very much last year.”

 

“Why? Did you give me your heart? Did I give it away the very next day?” Yeah, okay, that wasn’t the best thing he could’ve said, but he was cold, tired, and Hux’s voice always grated his nerves the wrong way.

 

“Keep it up, Ren,” Hux sneered. “And I’ll make sure you and the _Knights_ cover that song for next year.”

 

“You don’t have the power to do that.”

 

“Care to test that theory?” He could practically _see_ the smug expression on Hux’s face. “There will be bells. They’ll jingle. And you, front and center, with a tambourine.”

 

Kylo sighed heavily, more than ready for this conversation to be over so he could continue drinking himself into a happy, thoughtless oblivion without his agent’s nasal tone filling up the airspace. “Are we done here? Because as much fun as this isn’t, I have better things to do than talk to you on the phone all night.”

 

“Then, if you would just _answer_ the question—”

 

“I didn’t threaten her.”

 

Hux remained silent, obviously waiting for him to continue. Kylo ran a hand over his face.

 

“I found her place. It was a shithole. She wasn’t home.” A lie, but he wasn’t about to tell Hux that he’d chickened out and ran away from a _college girl._

 

“Alright,” Hux said, relief evident in his voice. “That’s good. Now in the future, if you could refrain from letting your _personal_ agenda get in the way—”

 

Kylo hung up.

 

*   *   *

 

It was half past three in the morning according to the glowing red analog numbers flashing beneath the widescreen TV, his head was pounding, and he needed to piss— _badly._

 

Muffling a curse under his breath as he tripped over the drained decanter, his shin catching the corner of his coffee table, Kylo stumbled over to his bathroom. He steadied himself against the cool, tiled wall with one hand as he relieved himself. Aiming was always a bit tricky in the inebriated state, and there was nothing worse than waking up the next morning to vomit and slipping in a puddle of your own making.

 

 _Pizza rolls._ The thought flashed through his mind as he zipped himself back up. _Pizza rolls sound fucking amazing._ He washed his hands—because he wasn’t a _barbarian—_ and made his way to the kitchen.

 

The thing about living in the city was that it never got dark, not really. Even at 3:33 AM, the lights from the scrapers and streets and cars and old buildings twinkled like a million tiny constellations before a backdrop of flurrying snow and black skies, basking his lonely top-floor penthouse in a muted, silver-gold glow, just enough so that his whisky-and-sleep-lidded eyes could see—

 

— _the_ man _sitting in the middle of his kitchen._

 

Kylo froze in his tracks, halfway across the living room, heart suddenly thudding wildly in his chest, not daring to breathe, and some distant part of him grateful that he’d already emptied his bladder.

 

The man was sat on a stool by the counter, serene and unmoving, staring at him placidly with eyes bright and blue and familiar, eyes that he hadn’t seen in _years,_ eyes that he knew were closed forever, or at least _should_ have been—

 

“You’re not really here,” Kylo heard himself croak out, his own voice sounding far away and quavering over the last syllable. “This is a dream.”

 

Across the room, bathed in a wash of city starlight, Luke Skywalker smiled—no, he _smirked—_ and reached out for the bowl of fruit sitting atop the counter, selecting a bright green apple, turning it about in his hand for inspection. “I suppose that’s true.” Voice ringing clear and true, without taking his eyes off his nephew, he brought the fruit up to his mouth and crunched into it, the sound echoing like a thunderclap in Kylo’s ears. “From a certain point of view.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Luke likes green food ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> 
> **kudos & comments give me sustenance


	3. Eyes on the Road

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY CRAP GUYS. 300 kudos?? I'm so blown away by the response that this fic is getting! What did I do to deserve you? :')  
>   
>   
> In this episode...  
> Challengers REY, FINN, and POE enter the stadium! DREAM SQUADRON!  
>   
> Heeeeere we go!  
> 

 

*

 

 _Don’t look at me, kid—eyes on the road. That’s good. Now, put her in fifth. Ea-sy off the clutch. Nice. Let's bring her up to speed. And, don’t forget to check the rear every once in a while. You know._ Objects in the mirror are closer than you think. _Or somethin’ like that. Think you’re ready for the highway? Don’t worry, your old man’s got the map up in here—I’ll keep us on track._

_Oh, and don’t tell your mother about this._

 

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

 

“Nice place ya got here, kid.”

 

The room was spinning. Kylo swayed slightly on his feet, then dug in his heels. “I drank too much. This is a dream.”

 

“You said that already.”

 

“I’m not talking to you.” He shook his head. “You’re  _dead_.”

 

“You’re right,” Luke Skywalker agreed, crunching once more into the apple, chewing thoughtfully. “Good fruit. Farmer’s market? Or—”

 

“ _Why are you here_?”

 

“I thought we agreed that I’m  _not_  really here. That this is all just a dream,” Luke said conversationally, then fixed his nephew with a deadpan look. “Maybe you ought to lay off the spirits.”

 

Kylo’s vision was swimming. The figure with the face of his uncle was blurring around the edges, but then again, so was everything else. Two people in a blank room surrounded by wide windows and muddy starlight. This was a dream, and he was far, far away, in another galaxy—

 

“The real question is,” Luke continued, “if this is all a dream—then why the hell are you dreaming of  _me?_ ”

 

Kylo opened his mouth to retort— _you were a miserable old man in life, and now that you’re rotting in a grave in Green-Wood, nobody will shut-up about you, I didn’t choose this—_ but the words did not come.

 

Instead, the swimming became a whirlpool, only it was inside him, churning and swirling. The blood pounded in his ears, his face felt too hot, and the ground beneath him lurched.

 

He doubled over and vomited all over the carpet.

 

*   *   *

 

While the last one was very tall, this one was very short.

 

Rey wondered for a brief moment if this was to become a regular thing—strangers showing up unannounced at her door. After a lifetime of uncertainties and  _finally_ getting somewhere solid, the thought made her uncomfortable. She hated surprises.

 

The woman had introduced herself as Maz Kanata, and, after taking Rey’s hand with surprising strength for someone so small and frail-looking, she’d stated that she was Luke Skywalker’s tester and here to divvy up his estate. Then, she’d promptly invited herself into the cramped apartment and the younger woman had been too astonished to stop her.

 

Without waiting to be offered, Maz took a seat on the canary-yellow couch. It sat in the middle of the room that served two and a half functions as living room, kitchen, and dining room—dining room was half a function because Rey didn’t think sitting in front of the coffee table and eating takeout deserved full points.

 

Rey  _loved_  that couch. It was the first piece of furniture she’d ever owned, and she’d leveled the wooden legs and reupholstered it herself after convincing her first city friend—a fellow NYU student named Finn—to help her lug it from the street corner where it’d been abandoned. It was old, but sturdy. They’d sat on it while eating pizza and drinking cheap beers that Finn had brought over.

 

But that had been a year ago. Rey suppressed the flush of embarrassment that rose to her cheeks as she noted the various stains, greying edges, and stuffing that now protruded from fraying stitches, in stark contrast to the tailored-and-pressed tan suit that the diminutive woman was wearing, her swinging Oxford-shoed feet not touching the ground.

 

“Uhm, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude—” For the life of her, Rey didn’t know why  _she_ was the one apologizing, “—but  _what?”_

 

“Tea,” Maz said kindly, addressing Rey as if she had not just barged into her home. “Earl Grey, if you have it. If not, whatever you have will do just fine. You should fix yourself a cup as well, and then we’ll talk.”

 

“Talk about what?” Rey did not move from her spot. She crossed her arms. “Who are you? What’s a—a  _tester_?”

 

“Testator,” Maz corrected primly. She reached into the breast pocket of her blazer and pulled out a card, handing it to Rey. “I represent Luke Skywalker, and am here on behalf of his estate to execute his final wishes.”

 

The business card was tan, like her suit, and stiff, with embossed black letters that read in neatly printed serif:

_Maz Kanata_

_Attorney at Law_

_Takodana, LLC_

 

“You’re a lawyer?” Her brows furrowed as she processed the woman’s words. She abruptly looked up. “Wait—Luke… Luke’s  _dead_?”

 

Maz gave a sharp inhale and winced, the wrinkles around her eyes magnified beneath black-framed, circular lenses, and began again in a softer tone. “I am sorry. I thought—yes. He is dead. And I will explain everything, what this has to do with you, what your place is in all this… but first— _tea_.”

 

Rey wanted to argue, opened her mouth to do as much with a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue, but then she saw the look in the older woman’s warm amber eyes—the weariness, the private sorrow—and decided against it. Setting her lips in a grim line, she gave a brief nod, and went to the stove to boil some water.

 

*   *   *

 

Maz was halfway through her second cup by the time Rey found her voice, her own tea, untouched and cold, sitting atop a beaten and liberally tabbed copy of  _Elementary Fluid Dynamics_ on the narrow wooden coffee table. “He—I… I didn’t even know he was sick.”

 

“Most people didn’t. His own sister didn’t even know, not until the end.” Maz gazed at Rey over the steaming rim of her mug. “Luke… was a very private man. It was not his way to burden his loved ones if he thought he could spare them the grief of a long goodbye.”

 

 _This doesn’t seem better,_ Rey thought to herself, reading over the sloping cursive for the umpteenth time.  _This seems… worse._ But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she handed the paper back to Maz, shaking her head. “There—there must be some kind of mistake. I’m not family, or a… a—” She could not quite bring herself to say  _loved one._ “I mean—I barely even knew him.”

 

“There’s no mistake, child.” Normally, she would have chafed at being called a  _child_ ; after all, how many nineteen-year-olds could boast paying their own rent and putting themselves through college? But Maz had a soothing way of talking that Rey, without a frame of reference, could almost pretend with was grandmotherly. “You are Rey Jakken, are you not?”

 

“Yes, but—” Rey cleared her throat. “The ‘y’ kind of looks like a ‘g.’”

 

“Aerospace Engineering second year at NYU. Resident of 4747 Nima Street, Apartment B-8, Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. Mechanic at Teng Malar’s Body Shop.” Maz looked amused. “It’s very specific.”

 

 _Grandmotherly._ Maybe that was why Rey, who usually kept things close to her chest, could not help but confess, “But—but all I did was fix his car.”

 

Maz simply canted her head to the side and shrugged. “Then it must have been quite a repair.”

 

“It was an oil change,” Rey supplied in a small voice, looking down and fiddling with a loose thread from her burgundy knit sweater. “Routine. I—I gave him a discount. Nothing to write home about.”

 

 _Or to write me into your_ will  _about,_ Rey thought glumly.

 

“I see,” was Maz’s enigmatic answer. The older woman continued, fixing her bespeckled gaze on Rey, “Well, unfortunately, he can no longer be here to tell us himself. So, we’ll have to make do with the next best thing.” She paused. “But… if I knew Luke—and, trust me, child, I’ve known that man a long time; I’m older than I look—” A small smile. “He always did everything with  _purpose._ Whatever his reasons were, I’m sure they were good ones. Maybe he saw something in you?”

 

Rey resisted a snort at that.  _Like what?_  she wanted to ask.

 

Before Maz had come knocking, she’d been about to head to the library, had just finished switching out the wheels on her bike for ones with deeper tracks so she could brave the snow outside. Teng Malar paid her good money for her work at the shop, but with her school schedule, she could only do about twenty hours a week, and so she couldn’t afford to take the metro all the time. Because the precious two dollars and seventy-five cents—five dollars and fifty cents for a round trip—added up quickly and that was hard-earned money better spent on food and rent.

 

Because  _this_ was her life and she was  _happy enough_ and things like random life-changing inheritances from strangers whose oil she’d changed one time—and maybe also offered to fix a leaky cylinder at another discounted price, but  _regardless—_ just  _didn’t_  happen.

 

Not to someone like her.

 

“No.” She wracked her head for a reason, scrabbling through archives of what little she knew about legal processes and inheritances, and presented the first decent piece of scrap she found. “I-I’m on scholarship. This could—”

 

“Luke stipulated that your part of the estate pass to you  _after_ your graduation.” Maz bestowed another kind smile, and Rey swallowed a lump in her throat and an emotion that she couldn’t name. “It won’t affect your financial standing at school.”

 

“It’s too much,” she insisted, shaking her head, voice stronger this time. “I can’t.”

 

The older woman reached over with a bronzed, weathered hand and squeezed her arm. “Sleep on it. You’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you, and this is not a decision to make lightly. You have all the time to decide.” Maz stood up, smoothing out the wrinkles in her trousers. “If you refuse, you’ll have to submit a written disclaimer. I can help you with that process. Though… if you’ll take advice from an old woman—visit. Go to Mustafar and take a look. Then, make an informed choice. Whatever you decide, you have my number.”

 

Rey was silent for a long while. For some reason, her eyes were a little blurry. “Yeah.” It was all she could think to say. “Yeah, okay.”

 

*   *   *

 

The Brooklyn Public Library at 10 Grand Army Plaza was a large grey slab of rectangular concrete on the northern edge of Prospect Park. The entrance was a forty-foot bronzed gate abutted by white pillars bearing gilded-gold glyphs of literary characters that all seekers of knowledge—and shelter—had to pass through to enter the building.  

 

The inside, however, was much less exciting, Rey had quickly learned after discovering this place for the first time in her first year: rows of fluorescent lights, scratched wooden tables, linoleum floors, more concrete, and the occasional person stalking through the stacks, muttering to themselves under their breaths. It was a lesson that applied to all of the city, and beyond—judge not a book by its cover.

 

The crowd was different this evening, she’d noted. Two days before Christmas, and the usual mess of students pouring over dissertations and thick texts had disappeared, likely gone home for the holidays, leaving in their wake a smattering of strangers taking refuge from the cold, browsing through magazines, newspapers, thumbing disinterestedly through books, or snoozing across a row of chairs pulled together.

 

“Hold on, hold on, hold on, back up,” Finn was saying, much too loudly for the middle of a library. There was no one around who cared enough to shush him. “When did you fix  _Luke Skywalker’s_ car _?”_

 

Rey, still pink-cheeked and slightly breathless from her five-mile bike ride through the snowy streets, scowled as she tugged the cream-colored wool scarf off her neck and folded it neatly into her canvased messenger bag. “I just spent the last twenty minutes recounting the most completely bizarre conversation of my life, and  _that’s_ your takeaway?”

 

“No, no, that’s a solid question.” Poe Dameron, arms crossed across his chest, shook his head vehemently. “Are you telling me you got to dig around the guts of a classic Incom T-65B X-wing and you  _didn’t tell us?”_

 

Rey looked between the two men sitting across the table. “You two are unbelievable.”

 

“How was she? What kind of work did she need?” Poe asked in one breath, leaning forward excitedly. “Please tell me you at least got to take her for a test drive.”

 

“It was an oil change and a leaky cylinder,” Rey provided with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “And joyrides are strictly against shop policy.”

 

“So… is that a yes?” Finn pressed.

 

Rey could not help the smile that tugged at the corner of her lips as she conceded, “I… may or may not have taken her around the block… once or twice.”

 

“Sweet,” Poe said with a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. Sometimes, Rey had a hard time reconciling this grease-blooded motorhead with the slick suit-and-tied Deputy Chief of Staff for New York’s Senator Organa. Probably because the man favored jeans, flight jackets, and wild, unkempt curls for his days off. It was almost like he had an alter-ego, if not for the easygoing attitude that pervaded both personas. “Alright, I’m back. So…  _Mustafar._ ”

 

Finn snorted, folding his arms across his double-breasted military-style coat. He’d just come from work. Some fiasco with a bunch of models walking out, and he and the other interns had to scramble to find last minute replacements. “Sounds like something from  _The Lion King_.”

 

“So, what, are you like a millionaire now?”

 

Rey’s scowl deepened. “Yeah, just announce it to the whole room, why don’t you,” she groused, but no one was paying them any mind. “Finn, you’re thinking ‘Mufasa,’ and Poe—no, I am most definitely  _not_  a millionaire,” she grumbled, addressing each in turn. “I don’t even know if I’m going to accept it.”

 

“What?! Why not?”

 

“Rey, are you  _crazy—”_

 

“ _Shhhh!”_ A security guard glared at them.

 

“Sorry, sorry,” Finn apologized loudly before leaning across the table to echo Poe in an urgent whisper, “ _Why not?_ ”

 

“Uh, were you not listening to a word I just said?”

 

“I betcha can’t name five reasons why you shouldn’t take it,” Poe challenged.

 

“Alright,” Rey said, counting the reasons on her fingers. “One, I’m not family. Two, I’m on scholarship. Three, it’s too much. Four, what am I supposed to do with a bloody mansion? And, five… well, it’s just…  _weird._ ”

 

“First of all, three and four are pretty much the same thing,” Finn said matter-of-factly. “And second of all, I thought the lawyer lady said it would pass to you  _after_ graduation.”

 

“Yeah, but—”

 

“Okay, let’s just disregard excuses one through four for a moment here,” Poe interrupted, waving his hand as if to banish them and ignoring her pointed scowl. “What’s so weird about it?”

 

“Uh, the whole thing?” Rey said, exasperated. “I don’t know—it’s just so out of the blue, like, I don’t understand why  _I’m_ the only one questioning why—” She looked about furtively before continuing in a lower voice, “— _Luke fucking Skywalker_ wrote me into his will? Does nobody else think it’s weird?”

 

Finn and Poe exchanged looks before both men shook their heads, their voices overlapping.

 

“No, not really—”

 

“I just don’t see it—”

 

With a groan, Rey pulled out her textbook of differential equations. “You guys are so not helpful.”

 

“C’mon, Peanut, don’t be like that.” A thoughtful expression crossed Finn’s face. “Okay, how about this: name five reasons why you  _should_ take it.”

 

“There aren’t any.”

 

Poe ignored her. “Numero uno, you won’t have to worry about money.”

 

“Two, you’ll always have a place to live.”

 

“Three! Google says they have an awesome vineyard. Free wine—”

 

“Four, we can come help you  _drink_ all that wine—”

 

“Which leads us to five.  _Sick house parties._ ”

 

Rey scrunched up her nose. “Again, I reiterate—not helpful _._  Plus, you’re forgetting one major detail. Joint ownership? It’s not like I can just do whatever I want with it… assuming that I even want it at all.”

 

“The mysterious nephew, huh?” Poe mused. “What did you say his name was again?”

 

“I didn’t,” Rey replied. “Besides, that’s not the point. It’s not right for me to stick my nose into other people’s lives like this.”

 

“But  _you_ didn’t do it.” Finn took a conspiratorial tone. “Luke did it for you. Maybe he  _wants_ you to stick your nose in.”

 

“Dude never married, right?”

 

“Too busy touring and making freakin’ awesome music.” Finn paused. “Before falling off the grid.”

 

“Maybe he thought of you as the daughter he never had?”

 

“Nah, granddaughter is closer.”

 

“Uh, no, dude was fifty-five. That would mean either Luke or his kid became a teen parent—”

 

“Maybe this is his convoluted way of setting you up with his nephew?”

 

Rey took that as her cue to interject, “And, so, we’ve come full circle back to  _weird._ ” She made a face. “And maybe a little bit past that.”

 

“A circle has no beginning or end, so that’s a moot point. I say we vote on it,” Poe chirped. “All in favor?”

 

Two arms promptly shot into the air.

 

“ _Guys._ ”

 

Despite her annoyance that her two so-called friends were ganging up on her like this, Rey couldn’t help the surge of affection that she felt for the both of them. For taking her out of her head and lifting her spirits while keeping her grounded and for just…  _being here,_ when she was pretty sure they’d rather be slurping down hakata ramen noodles in Little Tokyo or strolling through the Central Park Zoo, enjoying what little time they had together between their busy schedules.

 

Finn grinned. “Sorry, Peanut. The people have spoken.”

 

“Democracy,” Poe agreed, nodding sagely.

 

“I hate you guys,” Rey said, grinning back despite herself. “And I’ll think about it _._ ”

 

*   *   *

 

Rey still wasn’t convinced, but they’d kept pestering her until she finally relented and agreed to at least take trip upstate to look at the place before turning it down. She’d go sometime before the New Year,  _alone,_ she’d insisted, and promised she’d let them know before talking to Maz.

 

*   *   *

 

Across the city, alone in his penthouse with the sun slowly disappearing behind harsh lines of steel, Kylo woke up face-down in his bed, the setting star casting an orange hue onto his slate grey sheets. He shuffled to the bathroom and, bracing himself against the wall with one hand and using the other to aim—because there was nothing worse than slipping in a puddle of your own piss—felt overcome with a sense of déjà vu, like he’d walked these steps before…

 

 _Because you_ have  _walked these steps before… every morning. To take a dump._

Shaking his head, he reminded himself that he  _had_ spent the previous night drinking enough whisky to fuel a small cruise liner.

 

Head pounding, throat scratchy, and mouth tasting vaguely of vomit, he went to the kitchen and grabbed a vitamin water from the fridge along with an aspirin.

 

Spotting an unopened bag of pizza rolls in the freezer, Kylo ripped the bag open and dumped a few on a plate, throwing them in the microwave.  _Score._ Nothing like pizza rolls to soak up the dredges of a hangover.

 

 _Huh._ Kylo thought to himself as he gulped down the last of the vitamin water like a man dying from thirst, spotting something atop the counter. He plucked a browning apple core from the marble.  _I don’t remember eating that._

 

A contemplative beat, and then—

 

_Whatever._

 

He tossed it into the trash.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The deleted scene no one asked for: Kylo calling housekeeping to clean up his vomit, but they keep cutting him off/finishing his sentences/offering to send "the usual" because property damage is his modus operandi.
> 
> -
> 
> Snippet in the beginning inspired by [this excerpt](https://twoheartsofkyber.tumblr.com/post/169008110186) from _Aftermath: Empire's End_ a Star War's Novel by Chuck Wendig
> 
> [Teng Malar](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Teng_Malar), a fellow Jakku Scavenger
> 
> Brooklyn Public Library [Entrance](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Brooklyn_Public_Library_sunset_jeh.JPG/1200px-Brooklyn_Public_Library_sunset_jeh.JPG)
> 
> Luke's (actual) [T-65B X-Wing](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/T-65B_X-wing_starfighter) so I guess imagine a car version??
> 
> Pleading Creative License (TM) for the legal stuff in all this lmao. utriedgoldstar.jpg  
>   
> -
> 
> Again, I want to say I'm so glad y'all are enjoying this little piece of self-indulgent escapism with me :')  
> Future chapters might be coming a little slower as I'm starting a new job soon, but I feel SO creatively energized writing this especially with all your comments. Thank you thank you! :D


	4. Where All Paths Lead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phasmom and everyone bagging on Rey's fashion sense

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cranked out another one. Wine may or may not have been involved.

_One, two, three…_

 

For Rey of the Jakku Wastelands, who had spent the formidable years of her childhood watching the luxury airliners glide through the wide, endless blue from the fringes of the desert city of Abu Dhabi, the sprawling metropolis of poured concrete, lain brick, and serrated steel that was New York City sometimes got to be a bit… much.

 

_Eleven, twelve, thirteen…_

 

She was ill at ease in a crowd; it unnerved her, especially in the summertime, to be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers in the subway, to be surrounded by massive structures that blotted out the skies that had always been there, a balm to her soul when she was a scrawny little girl, living adjacent to affluence and living off their table scraps. Plus, it was just so _noisy._ All these people crammed together, laughing, crying, fighting, making-up, on and on, going about their lives, the sounds of it all muddling and blurring together into an immeasurable, fathomless hum, a vibration of life, a _force—_

 

_Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three…_

 

That was why she didn't go to Manhattan unless she had to, like the desert rat she was, preferring to stay in her Brooklyn borough where the streets were less crowded and the buildings less tall and she could hear herself think.

 

_Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one…_

 

Still, it was sometimes unavoidable, like when she had to go to class or when Finn and Poe dragged her across the bridge on weekends to some avant garde exhibition at the Met, so she found little ways to center herself, like—

 

_Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-nine… wait—crap._

 

Rey sighed, restarting her count from the window with the silver-tinseled Christmas tree that she knew to be number twenty-five, but it was no use; she kept losing track, getting all cross-eyed around forty, which was only about halfway up the towering white monolith that was 432 Park Avenue—a cubist’s wet dream with neat, evenly spaced rows of 100-foot-by-100-foot square windows, six across, stretching all the way up to the stratosphere—the tallest residential building in the world.

 

 _Over eighty stories,_ Rey concluded after doing the math in her head, a shudder running down her spine that had little to do with the cold. _So, this is how the other half lives._

 

As she trudged on through the slurried sidewalks, her thoughts drifted to the man whose wallet she carried in her pocket—with his pensive eyes and brooding shoulders and sullen mouth—and tried to envision him standing in front of one of the windows, the city laid at his feet.

 

The phrases _head in the clouds_ and _it’s lonely at the top_ swam through her ears as Rey made her final approach, feeling very much like a fish out of water with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her puffy off-white parka selected from the discount pile at Goodwill, her right hand gripping the leather wallet tightly as she strode right up to the doorman guarding the entrance.

 

“Hi,” Rey greeted cheerily, telling herself she wasn’t offended when the man dragged his gaze from her hand-knitted cap to her no-frills snow boots in an unimpressed onceover. “Does Kylo Ren live here?”

 

The doorman raised a pair of bushy brows and scoffed at her. “Nice try, hon.”

 

Rey raised her chin, not about to be turned away after dragging her ass out here on _Christmas fricken Eve,_ and persisted, “432 Park Avenue, PH95? Look, I just need to return something to him. This was the address on his driving—”

 

 “You a fan or something?” The man squinted at her suspiciously.

 

“What?” _Fan? Was this guy famous?_ Rey frowned. “No. He, uh, dropped his wallet and I’m just here to return it. You know, Good Samaritan, and all that… can I just leave it with—”

 

“Evening, Harry.” The smooth, melodious English accent came from her left.

 

Harry the Doorman promptly forgot Rey was even there, stern expression morphing into delight. “Phas! Good to see ya!”

 

About to protest, Rey decided a split-second later when the newcomer came into view that she didn’t blame him.

 

The woman called ‘Phas’ was over six feet tall, though with her five-inch heeled boots, it was probably closer to seven. Her skin was pale as the moon against the dark navy pantsuit that looked to be tailored within an inch of its life, made even more striking by the almost-white blonde hair that she wore short, cropped, and styled into shiny finger waves. Her intimidating silhouette was completed with a large, reflective chrome necklace that could’ve passed for a chest plate, emphasizing the icy blue tones of her eyes.  

 

"Mol and Kev are well, I expect?” Phas inquired, adjusting her grip on the vinyl garment bags slung over her shoulder and resting her other hand atop the rolling suitcase to her side. Neither of them paid much attention to Rey, who stood awkwardly off to the side as Harry dove into a detailed story of all the things that Mol and Kev—infant twins, Rey quickly learned—were teething.

 

After a brief exchange ending with Phas promising to bring some _Baby Burberry_ for them next time, she asked, “So I take it he’s in then? He’s not answering his phone.”

 

“Should be,” Harry answered. “We all got that memo to ‘ _contact Mr. Hux immediately on his personal number should Mr. Ren attempt to leave the premises at any time between now and Christmas Eve—’”_

 

“Kylo Ren?” Rey interrupted, resisting the urge to shrink when cool blue eyes shifted to acknowledge her. “You’re here for Kylo Ren?”

 

Pale eyebrows shot up. “Yes, I am. Are you familiar with my client, Miss…?”

 

“She’s just some crazy _Knights_ fan,” Harry the Doorman was quick to interject before Rey could so much as open her mouth to reply, shooting her a glare. “Had to call the _cops_ on a bunch of them last week, but I would’ve thought the snow would be enough to keep the riffraff away this close to Christmas.”

 

Rey ignored him, pulling the simple leather bi-fold wallet from her pocket and handing it to Phas, who looked at her with confusion.

 

“He dropped this,” Rey supplied, nonchalant. “I’m returning it.”

 

Phas opened it and, spotting the New York license bearing the dour, unsmiling visage of Kylo Ren, along with rows of credit cards and crisp one hundred-dollar bills all intact, her eyebrows shot up even higher.

 

“Thank you.” Rey, telling herself she was fulling embracing the _giving_ spirit of Christmas, also decided not to be offended by the blatant surprise in the woman’s voice. “That’s very kind of you. I’ll pass it along to him.”

 

“No problem,” she shrugged. Her task complete and conscience cleared, she turned to leave.  

 

“Miss?” Phas called after her. “Did you maybe want to come inside and wait in the lobby? I’m here to style Mr. Ren for an event later tonight, but I may be able to persuade him to stop for a photo or autograph—”

 

“ _No_.” Rey winced at her own sharp tone, not quite sure why she’d reacted so strongly. “I mean, no, thank you. I, uh, I’m not really a fan of, uhm, Mr. Ren. I really just came to return the wallet, and, now I have, so… I’m just gonna… go…” She took a few steps before scurrying off, hastily calling over her shoulder, “Happy Christmas!”

 

*   *   *

 

To his endless disappointment, Phasma arrived promptly at five o’clock on the dot.

 

“So, I’ve brought several options,” she began, business-like, brushing past Kylo with her heels clacking against the marble before it turned to carpet, and carefully laying the five garment bags over the couch. “But I know you don’t care about brands, so I’ll make it simple: dark red, dark blue, charcoal, heather grey, or, your favorite: black?”

 

Kylo grumbled something unintelligible as he stalked over to the adjacent couch and slumped down into it. He could feel the weight of her gaze boring into him as he poured himself a drink.

 

“It’s a little early to start drinking, don’t you think?”

 

“You can’t start if you haven’t stopped,” he quipped. “Trust me, this night will go a lot smoother for everyone if I’m sloshed.” He raised his glass to her and tossed it back quickly. “What?”

 

“I didn’t say anything,” Phasma shrugged.

 

“You’re giving me that _look._ ”

 

“No, I’m giving you _a_ look.” She gestured to the choices. “Now, which will it be?”

 

His only reply was another noncommittal noise.

 

Phasma sighed. “Black it is.” She moved over to option number three and unzipped it, revealing the immaculate bespoke Tom Ford within. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to wear some color once in a while.”

 

“Why risk it?” Kylo reached for the decanter again.

 

“You might want to slow down.”

 

“Start ahead, stay ahead.”

 

“Says the man languishing in three-day pajamas.” Phasma wrinkled her nose at the food stains on his white tee and leaned in closer, sniffing once, before recoiling in disgust. “When was the last time you bathed? You smell like a dead animal.”

 

“ _Eau de_ Baby Jesus’ Manger.”

 

“This dirty rockstar look may have worked for you when you were in your early twenties, but you’re pushing thirty now—”

 

“I’m twenty- _nine_ , thank you very—”

 

“—and thirty-year-olds know how to work a shower and put on aftershave.” Phasma glanced at the face of her slim, silver Cartier watch. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes. If you’re not out by then, I’m calling for reinforcements. I’ve got a sack of new interns to draw from and they’re very, _very_ eager.”

 

Kylo blanched at that. If there was anything he hated more than getting ready for these events, it was getting ready with a gaggle of giggly, talkative interns. “ _Fine._ ”

 

He emerged from the bathroom precisely sixteen minutes later, washed and clean-shaven, as Phasma sipped from a bottle of fizzy mold tea— _kombucha_ —that she must have brought in herself because he wouldn’t touch that shit with a fifty-foot pole. She was on her cell phone and stopped mid-sentence—something about _rallying the troops_ —when she saw him.

 

“Oh—never mind. You’re off the hook intern 2187. Call it off. But, I do want those catalogues tabbed and annotated by Monday. Yes _,_ I am well aware that’s the day after Christmas. Will that be a problem?” A pause. “Very good.” She hung up without saying goodbye.

 

“Slave driver,” Kylo sniped as he towel-dried his hair.

 

“No rest for the wickedly dressed.” She held up two ties: a dark burgundy and a black. “Choose.”

 

He nodded at the black one, ignoring Phasma’s rolling eyes and the muttered, “ _Typical,”_ under her breath. If he had to go to this thing, he was going to make damned sure he looked as depressing as possible.

 

“You’re still numbering your interns?”

 

“It’s best not to humanize them too much. We go through so many, you see. They’re much more effective when they’re not talking back.” Kylo pointed at the onyx cufflinks over the gold ones that Phasma was trying to sneak in. “Names are earned. Through a point-system.”

 

“Wow, it must be so much fun to work for you.”

 

Once Phasma had assembled his outfit, she shooed him into the other room to dress himself. Kylo mutely obeyed after a failed attempt at swiping his whisky glass from the living room table that resulted in Phasma forcibly wrenching the contraband away and threatening to suplex him into another dimension if he so much as spilled a drop on what she informed him was a ten-thousand-dollar suit.

 

Kylo didn’t doubt for a second that she could and _would_ make good on her promise— _threat_ —five-inch heels or no.

 

When he emerged, properly dressed and properly chastised, Phasma was ready with a hairdryer in one hand, a round brush in the other, and an array of sprays and gels set out on the table.

 

“I’m perfectly capable of styling my own hair,” Kylo grumbled, but sat down on the offered chair regardless, biting down on the urge to call her _Phas-mom,_ knowing that she hated the nickname. She’d threatened him with violence once already, and it was better not to push it.

 

“It’s Christmas Eve. You’re going to a _Charity Gala_ where you’ll be bumping shoulders with the upper echelons of New York society, not some kegger in your drummer’s basement. I don’t think the greasy backpacker look is going to cut it.”

 

“No one’s going to care what my hair looks like,” he replied stiffly as Phasma fastened the hairdressing gown around him.

 

“Pretty sure there are online forums dedicated to your quote-unquote ‘ _luscious dark locks.’_ Also, you’re the Senator’s son.” As if he needed the reminder. “This is her event. _Everyone_ is going to care what your hair looks like. Tilt your head down.” After a moment of silence, Phasma asked casually. “Have you spoken with her?”

 

“ _Some_ one’s clearly been speaking with _Hux,_ ” he said through clenched teeth. “Seriously, I don’t understand what you see in—ow _._ ”

 

“Sorry.” She did not sound sorry. “There was a knot. _Head down._ ” She pushed his head forward as he tried to shoot her a glare over his shoulder.

 

“I’ll bet that degenerate loves it when you bark out orders like— _ouch!”_

 

“I think you’re ready for the hair straightener now,” Phasma said brightly. “Any other _burning_ comments you’d like to get off your chest?”

 

“Is it too late to get another stylist?” he muttered darkly.

 

“Be my guest,” Phasma said as she misted product all over his hair, recognizing his empty threat. “That is, if you can even find someone to replace me. You’ve got an industry reputation, you know. I spoke to a make-up artist last week—Tita, big beautiful hair, solid D-cup, said she touched you up for _Vogue Italia._ No? Well, anyway, when I mentioned you, do you know what she said? She got this absolutely ashen look on her face and went, ‘ _The Knight is dark and full of terrors._ ’”

 

Kylo was silent for a moment. “Am I supposed to understand that reference?”

 

“You know. Knight like K-N-I—”

 

Off his blank expression, she sighed.

 

“Oh, never mind. Let’s just get this over with.” Phasma went back to running the straightener through his hair, angling it so that it curled slightly at the ends and fell just so. “You really need to get out more.”

 

*   *   *

 

Rey was walking down the steps to the subway entrance on 60th and Lexington when her phone began vibrating in her pocket.

 

“Rey! Oh, thank god,” Finn was saying in a rush before the receiver even reached her ear. “Where are you right now? Please say you’re still in Manhattan.”

 

“I’m still in Manhattan.” Rey hovered on the corner of the stairs beneath the lamplight, steaming peppermint hot chocolate in hand. “What’s up? Didn’t you and Poe have that thing tonight?”

 

“Not anymore,” Finn said. “I’ve got a date with a box of magazines instead.” He paused. “That came out wrong.”

 

Normally, she might have laughed, but something in his tone gave her pause. “What happened?”

 

“I have to sort through about two hundred issues of _Vogue Paris_ and label everything that ‘ _evokes an image of effervescent youth and spring._ ’ By Monday.” Stress and annoyance palpable in equal measure. “I need to ask a favor, and I kind of need you to say yes.”

 

“Aw, Peanut,” Rey cooed sympathetically. “Do you need me to come help? I was literally about to take the train back to Brooklyn. I can grab some takeout and coffee—”

 

“I’m at the office,” he interrupted. “Probably will be until tomorrow night. Rey. Don’t take this the wrong way,” Finn said, tone serious. “But you don’t know the first thing about fashion.”

 

Rey swallowed a gulp of whipped cream and cocoa. “Uhm, okay. That is probably the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

 

“Last week, I saw you wear striped overalls with argyle socks and chucks. Before that, you wore the same elephant sweater for ten days straight.”

 

“It was finals week,” Rey said defensively. “And those overalls were _cute._ ”

 

“They _were_ ,” Finn agreed. “Just not with those socks. Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to ask you.”

 

“Okay…” Rey leaned against the lamppost. “Now you’re making me nervous.”

 

The pin dropped. “I need you to be Poe’s date tonight for the gala.”

 

She blinked, unsure she heard him correctly, then sputtered, “Finn, _no._ ”

 

“Rey, _yes._ ”

 

“ _Finn, no,”_ Rey repeated. “You did cotillion. _I_ don’t know the first thing about table manners or—or curtseying—”

 

She flushed when she heard Finn’s laugh crackle through the receiver. “Oh my god, Peanut, it’s not a _debutante ball_. It’s dinner and an auction, use a knife and fork, dancing is optional, and you _don’t_ have to curtsey.” Then, he sighed, a heavy static-y exhale in her ear. “If not for me, then for Poe. He’s sitting at the Senator’s table and he got me a spot months ago. It’s 2K a plate, there _cannot_ be empty seats. Just sit in for me and eat. Please?”

 

Rey chewed her lip. A beat, and then, “Fine.” She conceded defeat with her own little sigh and rolled her eyes at Finn’s _thankyouthankyouthankyou, I’ll make it up to you._ “But only because I can’t believe you’re begging me to eat food.” Then, grumbling halfheartedly, “Do I have to wear a dress?”

 

*   *   *

 

Phasma twirled a ray-tail comb between nimble fingers. After a half hour of teasing and tousling—and _not_ the fun kind—Kylo’s nerves were catching up to him, every second that passed was a second that brought him closer to facing his mother, whom he hadn’t so much as spoken a word to in almost seven years. Death had a funny way of driving people apart—and of bringing them back together. “I think we’re finished.”

 

“You _think?_ ”

 

“I mean, unless you want me to put some powder on you.” She squinted down at him. “You’re looking awfully pale.”

 

“Like you’re one to talk.” He rolled out a crick in his neck, pulling at the hairdresser's gown still buttoned snugly in place to protect his suit. “Can I take this stupid thing off?”

 

She eyed the decanter that she’d placed at the top of the fridge, a laughable gesture meant to insult him more than anything else. She sniped crisply, “Does baby want his bottle now?”

 

His lip curled in disgust. “Sorry, I don’t play that game. You can save it for your little _gingersnap_.”

 

Phasma took the taunt in stride, unflappable as always. “Figures. You’ve got mommy issues the size of Mount Olympus.”

 

“Is that a euphemism? Because I’m not paying you extra for dirty talk.”

 

“Oh! That reminds me. Hold on.”

 

Before he could think to ask her what that could _possibly_ remind her of, Phasma went to her purse and, after a bit of rummaging, pulled out a familiar looking leather square—his wallet. The one he’d lost—a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach—in _Brooklyn._ “What—where did you get this?”

 

“A girl came by earlier. Said you’d dropped it.”

 

“ _What girl?”_

 

Phasma arched a brow. “Cute little face. Brown hair. About yay high.” She held her hand to her shoulders. “Horrid shoes. Oh, and she spoke the Queen’s.”

 

_Rey._

 

“Why? Someone you know?” Though her tone was conversational, she studied him closely, an appraising sort of look that warned him that his answer would _not_ be subject to stylist-client privilege, if such a thing existed.

 

“No.” A half-lie, and one he felt no compunction telling. Sure, he knew her name, her address, her major, her place of work, but he was certain by now she knew his as well. They were even. “Nobody I know.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [432 Park Avenue](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49055345/1.0.jpg)
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> Kylo doesn't like that game, but maybe he likes others. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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> NEXT EPISODE: Formal Introductions!
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> Comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast within me.


	5. Crash Course

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone tryna pushing their agendas but Rey's just there for the food

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there!  
> A bit of a longer one. This one was kind of harder to write because there was a lot that I wanted to fit in. Hopefully it turned out alright!

His client was in a mood.

 

Well, the wretched brute was _always_ in a mood, but tonight, Hux could sense that there something different about it—something he could not quite put his finger on—even as the car door slammed shut and the black shroud of Kylo Ren’s temper flared and filled the enclosed space like a miasma.

 

A lesser man might have cowered, but not Armitage Hux. These silver-spoon fed elites were all the same: born at the top, never having to taste the bitterness of clawing your way up the ladder, one rung at a time, each further and higher than the last, and a long, long way down—and no cushy inheritance to soften the fall. And, always, they underestimated him. This suite Hux just fine. After all, was it not the art of war to defeat one’s enemy without fighting?

 

“You’re five minutes late,” Hux observed archly, cold eyes drifting from his Bvlgari watch face to his client’s silhouetted figure hunched over in the seat across from him. When there came no reply, his fingers continued drumming, impatiently as ever, over the First Order insignia emblazoned proud and red across the leather portfolio resting in his lap. “What took you so long?”

 

It was Phasma who answered, from the passenger’s seat by the ever-silent Mitaka, who promptly put the car into drive as soon as the woman buckled her seatbelt. “A little mishap with the shoes.”

 

“What _sort_ of mishap?”

 

“There was a spewage.”

 

Hux misheard her. “What _kind_ of spillage?” When her eyes met his in the rearview mirror, pale eyebrows lifted, he huffed irritably. With _her,_ Hux knew it was better to choose his battles. “Nevermind—we have business to discuss.” The venue was only five blocks away, and in the current traffic conditions, he had maybe ten, twenty minutes at most before they arrived. “First things first: President Snoke is _extremely_ displeased with your behavior as of late. He informs me that he has tried your personal number _twice_ in the past week without response and would remind you that such carelessness and insubordination will _not_ be tolerated from a First Order talent. As I have already suggested to you once earlier this week: _check your phone._ President Snoke would also like to impress that this is your final warning.”

 

Kylo did not react, save for a minute twitch in his jaw that others might have missed; but, as much as Hux despised him, he knew him long and well enough to have learned to read his tells. This one said, in his own translation, _I am extremely displeased by this information, and, as much as I am loath to admit it, you are right,_ which satisfied him enough to continue.

 

“Second: I have been in contact with the court in Los Angeles county and they have informed me that requests for copies of name change certificates must be submitted _in person_. I was about to book your airfare, but then the clerk was so kind to inform me that you also need your _birth certificate_ as a supplemental form of identification, which, as you might remember, we do not have.” A beat, as Hux let the weight of his words sink in before adding, “Because you had it shipped to your mother.”

 

Throughout the verbal lashing, his client did not say a word in return. It occurred to Hux then what the difference was: his silence. Under normal circumstances, this was the point in the conversation where Ren would be striking back with his usual, unmitigated puerile fervor. But he wasn’t. Something was off. He recalled something that President Snoke had once told him:

 

_“Sentiment. That is his greatest weakness. Yes, of course, sentiment, compassion—they have their uses when wielded properly. To sell pretty songs, and poems, and art. But not in business… It is a family trait, it seems. In vain, I have tried to snuff it out, but, alas, my dear protégé is stubborn. He will not bend.”_

 

Even then, in the early days of his working relationship with a younger Ben Solo, before the latter had taken on the mantle of Kylo Ren, Hux, with his shrewd insight, had known the correct answer to the unspoken question. And his reply had pleased President Snoke greatly:

 

_“Well, you know what they say about things that don’t bend.”_

 

Henceforth, it became Hux’s job to watch him. To keep track of his dealings and to report back to President Snoke. A distasteful job, to be sure, and one that he took no pleasure in, but Hux was used to dirty work. Those who sought to reach the stars could not afford to be squeamish over a bit of mud. 

 

The hefty year-end bonuses did not hurt, either.

 

Unfortunately, this year’s bonus still hung in the balance, and the outcome of tonight would undoubtedly tip the scales. Hopefully, in his favor. With a long, put-upon sigh, Hux arrived at his final point:

 

“So, you must understand the importance of tonight. Whatever bad blood there remains between you and the Senator—wash it away. Or, as you Americans like to say, _bury the hatchet._ Do what needs to be done. We need those documents if we are to successfully move forward with the contestation. Am I making myself clear?”

 

As the hotel came into view, Kylo was reaching for the handle before the car came to a complete stop.

 

“Ren.” Warning hung in his tone. A truly horrible job, more like babysitting, really—

 

“ _Crystal_.”

 

—and the door slammed on his face.

 

*   *   *

 

The 18th Annual Christmas Charity Gala hosted by Senator Leia Organa at the Lotte Palace Hotel on Madison was to be the most lucrative one yet; the charity auction that was to follow after the dinner reception was expected to bring in upwards of two million dollars, owing to the generous donations out of the private collections of some of the Senator’s oldest friends. All proceeds would go to the oncology department at NewYork-Presbyterian Children’s Hospital. There would be over three hundred guests in attendance for this black-tie event, according to Poe, and the hotel had contracted a two-Michelin star chef for the banquet.

 

“ _If it’s a black-tie event, I don’t understand why_ I _have to wear a dress,”_ Rey had complained to Finn inside the massive warehouse that served as the office for First Order Couture as two girls who had introduced themselves as Two-fer and Zeroes respectively—pointing to their tags which read ‘FN-2124’ and ‘FN-2000’—took her measurements with swift, perfunctory movements.  

 

“ _Because our Fall evening gowns are amazing and I’m not sending you on my boyfriend’s arm in Ann Taylor Loft. That would be disrespectful,”_ Finn had summarily replied once he’d finished attacking her face with a wipe and ushering her behind a rack of neatly pressed intern uniforms. _“Plus, I’ve been dying to do this for ages.”_

_“What, get me out of my pants?”_ Rey had shot back crossly, flushing indignantly when Two-fer, reaching for the buttons of her well-worn jeans, had muttered something under her breath that sounded like _you call_ these _pants?_ She’d promptly swatted the girl’s hands away, saying she could undress herself thank you very much, and began shrugging out of her layers of winter clothes.

 

“No _, style someone,”_ he’d corrected without missing a beat. _“Interns don’t even get considered until at least five hundred points.”_ Before Rey had been able to ask what he meant by _points_ , he’d grinned and continued, “ _Don’t worry, Peanut… you’re about to come out of your shell.”_

 

She’d groaned then. _“That is the worst joke you’ve ever made.”_

 

They’d given her a robe of soft, terrycloth material and sat her in a chair in front of a mirror before subjecting her to what she would think back on as a blur of indignities, and once she had been tweezed, plucked, painted, and coiffed within an inch of her life, Rey blinked at a girl she barely recognized staring back at her in the mirror and, for the umpteenth time in this utterly baffling December, felt like she was having an out of body experience.

 

But there had been no time to dwell on it; almost as soon as they’d finished with hair and makeup, they were ushering her behind the partition and Zeroes was shoving a pair of seamless nude-colored underwear and what looked like two flesh-toned flower stickers into her hands.

 

Rey’s brows had knitted together in confusion. “ _What’s this?”_

 

“ _Pasties.”_ Her puzzled expression had deepened then, and afterwards, Rey was glad that she had not given voice to the image of baked meat pies that had flitted across her mind—clearly, it meant something different here, as a second later, Zeroes had elaborated, “ _They go on your—”_

 

“ _Thank you,”_ she’d said quickly, mortification tinging her cheeks redder still even through the layers of foundation and blush painstakingly applied to her face. _“I’ve got it.”_

 

The gown Finn had selected for her was a deep, rosy beige silk that clung to the modest curves of her waist and hips and fell to the floor in elegant waves of sheer, diaphanous chiffon adorned with silvery appliqués in the shape of carnation petals. It was a lovely dress; even Rey, who didn’t know the first thing about fashion (she was determined to never let Finn live that down) had to grudgingly admit that it was beautiful, and even her initial discomfort with the generous décolletage was somewhat assuaged by the delicate gold and opal drop necklace that fell passed her collarbones to rest against her sternum.

 

 _“That, you can keep,”_ Finn had told her. _“Used them for the last show and about half the models walked off with them anyway. Won’t be missed.”_

 

 _“It’s… lovely. All of it,”_ Rey’d admitted grudgingly, running her fingers through the soft, buttery fabric that felt almost like nothing against her skin—impracticable, but lovely. _“I just feel bad for hijacking your Cinderella dream date with Poe. Are you sure I can’t just do the cataloguing for you?”_

 

_“Do you know the difference between messaline and charmeuse?”_

_“No, but—”_

_“I rest my case.”_

 

And that was how Rey ended up sitting in the back of an Escalade with Poe, both dressed to the nines, the former moping in a faux-fur lined coat and glaring enviously between the nightmarish four-inch stilts squeezed on to her feet and the comfortably _flat_ leather loafers on the latter. As they approached their destination, Poe turned to give her a quick rundown of the itinerary:

 

“So, as with any of these fancy-shmancy shindigs: reception first. Lots of champagne, hor d’oeuvres, that kind of thing. Go crazy with it…” He squinted at her thoughtfully for a moment before qualifying, “but not _too_ crazy. We still got dinner after. That’ll start with a couple speeches, toasts, not super exciting, and they can get kinda long, so I recommend imbibing just enough to have a good buzz by then. Dinner is a five course, with dessert—I hear they’re serving the Senator’s favorite Corellian _choux à la crème,_ which is just a pretentious way of saying—”

 

“Cream puffs?” Rey lit up, all trace of sourness melted away from her expression. Poe chucked her lightly on the top of her head.

 

“Yeah. You may have to fight her for them. Oh, and I mentioned you were coming, she’s very excited to meet you.”

 

“Me?” Rey said, confused. “Why would the Senator be excited to meet me?”

 

At that, Poe studiously avoided her gaze. “Uh… I might have mentioned… that whole Luke Skywalker inheritance thing.”

 

“You— _what?!”_ Rey sputtered. “ _Poe—"_

 

“But, before you get mad, just hear me out!” he said quickly, knowing if he allowed her to gain momentum, she would be unstoppable. “The Senator was an old friend of his—like they go _way_ back, like back to her art school days way back. That’s why she’s donating everything from tonight for cancer research—for Luke.”

 

“And… you didn’t think this might’ve been, I don’t know, _important to mention?”_

“Well, I’m mentioning it now!” Poe retorted defensively. “You literally just told us _yesterday,_ so forgive me if it slipped my mind!”

 

Rey raised her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, then, remembering the makeup, crossed her arms in a huff and threw her back against the seat. A moment passed in silence before she asked, calmer, “Did she… did she say anything else?”

 

“You mean does she know why he did it? I didn’t ask. The way she put it… made it seem like his death came as a shock to everyone.”

Maz’s words rung in her ears: _His own sister didn’t even know, not until the end._

 

Rey chewed her lip thoughtfully, digesting this new information, which seemed to be the only thing she was doing lately. From the shock of learning about Luke Skywalker’s death on the news to the out of nowhere inheritance and now to this last minute upper class party where she was apparently about to meet the Senator of New York, who also happened to be an old friend of the man who’d written her into his will for reasons unknown—between it all, Rey felt herself being stretched rather thin, and wished nothing more than to be back in her cozy apartment, wrapped up in a blanket on her favorite yellow couch with a mug of cocoa and watching Christmas specials on TV.

 

 _Tomorrow,_ she told herself. _Get through tonight, and you can do that tomorrow._

 

“Does Finn even _really_ have work to do?” Rey grumbled.

 

Poe scoffed. “You think we have the brains to come up with something like this?”

 

Rey shrugged. “I don’t know… you politicians are a crafty bunch.”

 

“I don’t do the politicking, I just facilitate it. And, _yes,_ he really does have work. No offense, but, uh,” he gave her the side eye. “You’re not really my type.”

 

Rey feigned indignation even as her lips twitched in amusement. “Yeah, well you’re not really _my_ type either.”

 

Hatchet effectively buried, Rey only half-listened once Poe resumed his spiel—something about an auction after dinner in the drawing room, schmoozing for an engineering internship with the CEO of Incom Corp and Sorosuub Tech, Lars Bribbs, and watching out for the return of the prodigal son—because then, the car lurched to a stop outside of the Palace Hotel and she felt the air leave her lungs in a soft gasp.

 

“ _Oh.”_

 

*   *   *

 

There was something about the courtyard of the Lotte Palace Hotel that felt like stepping into a time machine. This was especially the case around holidays, when the entire façade of the historic neo-Italian Renaissance landmark was swathed with the red, golds, and silvers of evergreen wreaths and bathed in the twinkling glow of the enormous Christmas tree in the center, bearing a golden seven-pointed star and covered from top to bottom with lights and baubles as waiters dressed in red-velvet vests balancing flutes of sparkling champagne and trays of appetizers orbited through the crowd of high-society New Yorkers in their finery. It was 1890, a night in the city, as ghosts from gilded ages past whispered in the air through a string quartet’s lilting rendition of _Deck the Halls—_ only with electricity and outdoor heating.

 

And a 55-story luxury hotel looming behind it.

 

Kylo was chasing the edges of his creeping hangover with his fourth glass of champagne, glowering at all who so much as glanced this way and speaking to no one. They all knew him, one way or another, by name or by reputation, and so they afforded him a wide berth. But he was used to the stronger stuff, so by the time she spotted him from across the way, his temple was throbbing, and he viciously swallowed the bile that threatened to rise to his throat as he came face to face with Leia Organa for the first time almost seven years.

 

“Mother,” Kylo greeted stiffly.

 

He cursed himself internally for the tremulous quality of his voice. Though he towered over her, the Senator exuded a commanding presence that only seemed to grow with age; and despite the unfamiliar creases that now lined the sides of her mouth as well as her eyes, she met his stare readily with a gaze that seemed to shorten the years of separation, and then some, and suddenly, he was a little boy again.

 

“Benjamin.”

 

 _Of course,_ Kylo thought to himself angrily. _Of course, she’d play it this way._ An unbalanced opponent was always that much easier to topple. However, expecting it was one thing, hearing it was another entirely—he flinched, and cursed himself for that too. “That’s not my name anymore.”

 

“Not officially, no,” Senator Organa gently agreed. “But no matter what you’re calling yourself, you’ll always be Ben to me.” Then, she arched a brow, imperious and expectant. “Well? Aren’t you going to give your mother a hug?”

 

People were staring. Kylo could feel the gazes of a hundred eyes boring into him, could envision the headlines that would undoubtedly grace the front pages of _Gawker_ and _Perez Hilton_ for maximum impact on Christmas morning, when everyone was at home with nothing better to do _: A Family Reunion! Senator Organa and estranged son, Kylo Ren, reunite on Christmas Eve,_ or, _Stars Collide! Sen. Leia Organa and rock royalty Kylo Ren tense stand-off at Palace Hotel!_ They would only get worse with every agonizing second that ticked by as some photographer with a zoom lens was undoubtedly snapping away from an adjacent building.

 

 _No,_ he wanted to say. _No, that’s the last thing I want to do. I don’t want your kindness._

 

_“President Snoke is extremely displeased with your behavior as of late… do what needs to be done.”_

 

Stars help him, if he was hearing _Hux’s_ voice in his head, then surely, he must be losing it.

 

Kylo took a deep bracing breath, and, unbidden, the words of another, whispered to him from another life, floated through his ears.

 

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

 

Headache subsiding, the ground solid and cold, and feeling like a man walking to the gallows, he closed the distance and stepped forward into his mother’s embrace.

 

It was warm.

 

*   *   *

 

They’d circulated the courtyard once before finding a warm corner by a heating lamp. Rey’s feet were already aching, unaccustomed to the unnatural position in which they were forced. Though, she would admit grudgingly and only to herself, the heels _were_ doing wonders for her posture, and she fully intended to do this thing with her head held high.

 

It had taken her several moments to compose herself and dampen the swell of emotions that caught in her throat at the sight of the general splendor, but then she’d surreptitiously swiped the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. So what if it was the most flipping beautiful place she’d ever set foot in? So what if it looked like every Christmas card, carol, and _dream_ combined and wrapped up with a bow? It was stupid to get weepy over a bit of tinsel.

 

All of that was quickly forgotten once she caught sight of the _food._

 

Poe was supplying her with the names of notable attendees while Rey shamelessly stuffed her face with whatever colorful concoction she managed to snatch off each waiter tray that passed, determined to try them all, and, _oh,_ each bite-sized treat was better than the last. Did the rich get to eat like this all the time? And these were only the appetizers? Perhaps she’d been too hasty with her earlier dismissal and lowbrow snobbery. Rey dragged her gaze across the room predatorily, searching for a waiter carrying a tray that she’d yet to sample when she froze, a smoke salmon crudité halfway to her mouth.

 

It was _him._ The creep who’d cost her a needless subway trip to Manhattan because rich people couldn’t be bothered to properly look after their things. He was here. And he was—

 

— _hugging_ Senator Organa?

 

“… and there’s Representative Meena Tills of the 3rd Congressional District, escorted by Admiral Gial Ackbar. Watch. Any second now, they’re gonna go for the shrimp cocktails—bingo.” Poe looked at her, brows scrunching up at the gobsmacked look on her face. “Hey, are you okay?”

 

“Is that…?”

 

Poe followed her line of sight, a cloud passing over his cheer as he muttered darkly, “The prodigal son, returned from his world tour.”

 

Rey gaped at him. “ _Kylo Ren_ is the Senator’s son?”

 

“The one and only. And thank god for that. Kid like that, and I’d stop procreating too.” Poe shook his head, then tilted his gaze towards her, contemplative. “I never pegged you for a _Knights_ fan.”

 

“I’m not.” Rey sighed, briefly wondering if there was something intrinsically fangirlish about her if everyone kept asking her that question. She’d meant to Google him earlier, after learning about his fame from the doorman, but it had slipped her mind in the mad scramble to make it to Finn and then here on time. “What are they, some kind of band or something?”

 

Poe was incredulous. “Come on. _The Knights of Ren?”_ Off her blank expression, he continued, “Three multi-platinum albums? ‘Storms Over Dromund Kaas’? ‘Tattoos n’ Binary Sunsets’? _No_? Not even ‘Unchained Victory’?”

 

“No,” Rey replied, annoyed. “But it sounds like we’ve got the president of their fan club right here.”

 

“Me? No way,” Poe said, as if the very notion was an affront to his person. “I just did my homework, is all. But, I knew him when I was a kid—yeah, back in high school. He was a freshman when I was a senior, but he was kind of a huge asshole even then. Chip on his shoulder a mile wide. Though, I guess looking back it’s kind of understandable… y’know, with his whole parental situation.”

 

“Because his mum’s a senator?” They’d broken apart now, Rey observed, and Kylo stood hunched over, shoulders stiff and expression inscrutable as the Senator placed a hand on his arm in a gesture that was nothing but maternal now that she knew, and said something that, to Rey, looked like, _I’m glad you’re here._

 

“I mean, yeah… I guess.” Poe scratched his chin. “But, I was talking about his dad.”

 

“His dad...?” Rey echoed.

 

“You don’t know?” Poe shook his head. “Sorry, sometimes I forget that you’re not from around here. His dad. Han Solo.” He leaned in and said, quietly, “The smuggler?”

 

“Han So—” Rey cleared her throat, catching on the last syllable. “Han _Solo_?”

 

“Yeah. Kylo Ren was just his stage name, er, well, ‘til he got it legally changed a couple years back. It was this whole thing. Anyway, his _real_ name is—”

 

“Benjamin Solo,” Rey breathed, her voice barely a whisper as a puzzle piece she didn’t even know was missing fell into place.

 

“Yeah, actually. Wow. How did you—?"

 

“ _Poe!”_

 

It was the Senator, and she was waving them over with a smile on her face.

 

“Ah, duty calls. I believe some introductions are in order—Rey?”

 

She gulped. Kylo Ren—no _—Benjamin Solo_ was staring at her, and—

 

—and he looked _pissed._

 

*   *   *

 

It was a coup. A trick. They’d planned this all along, his mother and his uncle. Somehow. What their objective was, Kylo could not say. But that was the only explanation for _her_ to be here, and with fucking _Dameron—_

 

He managed a microscopic nod, the barest inclination of his head, as the Senator introduced him—as _my son, Ben—_ and stood silent and rigid throughout the rest.

 

“—and you must be Rey.” The Senator shook the girl’s hand with a knowing gleam in her eye that only served to stoke the embers of hot betrayal in his diaphragm. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

 

“The pleasure’s all mine, Senator Organa,” the girl replied, a believably awestruck look on her face as if this were truly their first meeting. _What a good little actress,_ he thought sourly. “I, uh, I love the work you’re doing on the, uhm, Education Committee—”

 

The Senator silenced her with a hand. “Oh, shush, I get enough shop talk from this one.” She jabbed a thumb at Dameron. “It’s Christmas Eve. You’re at a party. Enjoy yourself.”

 

“I’ll try.” The girl smiled weakly at the Senator in return. It did not escape his notice how staunchly she avoided his gaze.

 

“I was just telling Rey how your old buddy Lars would be here tonight. You know, Rey’s aerospace engineering. Top of her class—”

 

“ _Poe.”_ She gripped the man’s sleeve, hazel eyes flashing.

 

Ah, there it was. Kylo felt a wash of cold dampening the burn of their duplicity. He should have known from the first. Just another social climbing rat like the rest of them.

 

“I’m sure something can be arranged,” the Senator replied, clasping her hands together.

 

“No!” the girl interrupted, her cheeks pinking. “No, as much as I appreciate the offer, I, uhm, I already have a job. An internship is still a bit of a ways off for me—”

 

“Where do you work?” the Senator asked.

 

 _As if you don’t already know_. Kylo dug his nails into his palm to keep the barb from flying out.

 

“I’m a mechanic.” The flush in her cheeks deepened, as if she were embarrassed of this fact. _A_ talented _little actress,_ Kylo thought to himself bitterly. “At Teng Malar’s in Brooklyn.”

 

“Average salary for a mechanic is, what, fifteen an hour?” The girl did not respond. “An internship with Incom would pay better. And, who knows? It could even lead to a job, if you play your cards right.”

 

 _Typical._ Kylo ground his teeth, muscle in his jaw twitching. He caught her shoot a fleeting glance in his direction before quickly looking away. _Another charity case for you to champion._

 

“Though, I will give you a fair warning,” the Senator was saying, observing the girl with her usual shrewdness. “Lars Bribbs was always a bit of a crabby fellow, and I fear that he hasn’t aged quite so well as the rest of us. I can get you an introduction, but the rest would be up to you. Even if you aren’t looking for an internship now, it would be foolish to let an opportunity like this pass, wouldn’t it?”

 

The girl hesitated, but like all, bowed to the persuasive force of nature that was Leia Organa. “Yes, Senator,” she said at last. “Thank you.”

 

“Good,” the Senator replied, pleased. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I need to borrow your date for some shop talk.”  

 

At this, the girl paled, looking as if she _did_ mind—quite a bit, actually—but she could not very well say no without seeming unreasonable. Kylo thought he could see the same train of thought pass over her face before she nodded and forced a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Of course, Senator.”

 

*   *   *

 

Rey watched forlornly, unease twisting in her gut, as she watched Senator Organa guide Poe away, the latter throwing an apologetic glance over his shoulder and she suddenly found herself wishing that she’d heeded his earlier advice to load up on champagne.

 

That would make _this_ marginally less awkward.

 

She could _feel_ the weight of his stare on her, unrelenting throughout that entire exchange and making her face grow hot beneath it. Rey knew that if she were to look at him now, she would find his eyes boring holes into her. Not that she blamed him.

 

It was all starting to make sense now—why he’d showed up on her doorstep. Luke Skywalker was his uncle; Poe had said he and the Senator were old friends, so paternal uncle, then? Even as her mind struggled to comprehend their complicated family dynamics, one thing was startlingly clear: she was the interloper in all this. And, _god,_ he must hate her. It even made sense now why he had looked at her so funny, over the threshold, like he wasn’t sure what to make of her. She ought to explain, should let him know that she had no intention of accepting—

 

“How much is she paying you?”

 

Rey looked up at him, startled at his abruptness. “Excuse me?”

 

“The Senator.” His jaw clenched. Then, he corrected, as if it were very distasteful, “My _mother._ How much is she paying you?”

 

“Paying me…” Her brow furrowed, bewildered at his line of questioning. “For what?”

 

He gave her a scathing glance, lip curling. “That was a good little show the three of you put on, but you can drop the act.” He straightened as an elderly couple—the Admiral and Congresswoman Poe had pointed out earlier—passed within earshot, and continued in a low, quiet tone. “Whatever it is, I’ll double it.”

 

“Seriously, I have no idea what you’re—”

 

“It’s all a ruse, isn’t it?” He turned, now glaring down his considerable nose at her, dark eyes burning with barely contained fury.

 

“ _What_ is?” Rey crossed her arms defensively; she’d expected some anger, but not _this._ Surely, she was missing something.

 

“All of it.” Her chin tilted higher as he flicked his eyes over her disparagingly. “The Senator can feed you lines and dress you up in pretty dresses, but I’ve seen where you live. What’s your game? What do you get out of this? And don’t say Mustafar, because I’ll just tell you right now there’s no chance in hell that’s happening.”

 

Rey was momentarily taken aback at the sharp, cutting edge of his words before she felt the flames of her own ire rising to meet his. “What is your _problem_?”

 

He continued as if he hadn’t heart her, eyes narrowing into slits. “Somehow, you’ve found out about Skywalker. Is that what this is? You’re blackmailing her for money and status?”

 

“Look, _asshole,_ ” Rey snapped. She should have felt threatened by his proximity—he was close enough to her now that she could practically feel him breathing down her neck—but all she felt was self-righteous anger. Even so, she remembered where she was, and reminded herself that this was the Senator’s _son,_ and bade herself to say as evenly as possible, “I don’t know what you’re going on about, but _obviously_ there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”

 

“Clearly,” he sneered, “if you thought for one second that I was just going to roll over and let you take what’s _mine._ Here’s how this is going to go: you will forfeit your share of the estate. My attorney will draw up the necessary paperwork. Whatever my mother has promised you for your role in this touching little family reunion—I’ll double it. No, I’ll _triple_ it. Then, you will sign an NDA and fuck off back to wherever the hell it is you came from.”

 

Looking back, Rey should have just kept her mouth shut. After all, disregarding everything else, hadn’t it been her original intent to refuse it anyway? But, there was just something about the way he said it—the utter _contempt_ , the sense of entitlement, like what he wanted was a certainty and everyone should just get the hell out of his way—that made her see _red_ , and, suddenly, she was thankful for the four inches of added height as reared up and she snarled back with all the venom and vitriol she could muster, “And if I don’t?”

 

She saw the surprise flash in his eyes, surfacing for a brief moment before being consumed by the fire once again. His next words sent a shiver down her spine, because she could sense how much he _meant_ it, the threat real despite how softly it was uttered: “Then, I will _destroy_ you.”

 

 *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honorable mentions: 
> 
> Dress based on [this](http://krikorjabotian.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FW1718-06-01-W.jpg). I wanted Rey to have a feminine, waifish look.
> 
> [Corellian Cream Puff](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_cream_puff) (nothing too exciting)
> 
> [The Palace Hotel](https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7293/11532126393_d954e664c8_b.jpg) but imagine mORE TINSEL
> 
> [Beolars Bribbs](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Beolars_Bribbs) CEO of [SoroSuub Corporation](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/SoroSuub_Corporation/Legends) and [ Incom Corp/Industries](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Incom_Corporation)
> 
> [Meena Tills](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Meena_Tills) accompanied by our beloved [Admiral Ackbar](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Admiral_Ackbar)
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> **  
> _TBC in the next one._  
>   
> 
> Don't forget to leave your kudos and comments with the coat check! :)


	6. Don't Argue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW: Brief mention of suicide**

**\- One Year Ago -**

 

“Don’t let it get to your head, girlie.”

 

The gruffness of the words was belied by the only half-reproachful look on Ivano Troade’s wizened features. At sixty-eight, he was easily the oldest mechanic in the shop, having at least two decades on everyone else and fifteen on the owner, Teng Malar, himself. But Troade was a spry old man, with wiry muscles hewn from a life of hard work, and, like Rey, he biked to work every morning—although, recently, his wife had made him install secondary wheels as his reflexes and balance were not what they used to be. _Training wheels,_ he’d complained in the breakroom over their traditional morning coffee and bagels, _she’s making me ride a fuckin’ tricycle! Me, at my age!_ Since then, he’d trudged through the shop with a permanent scowl on his face, though it always eased up, the frown lines becoming less severe whenever he saw Rey.

 

“ _My_ head?” Rey teased. “I keep telling you to crack open a window when you’re changing those brake pads.”

 

Rey grinned, ducking to avoid the greasy rag that he tossed at her head as she ducked into the garage that housed the reason for her fellow mechanic’s envy.

 

Her heart soared. It wasn’t pristinely kept, like most classic and vintage cars tended to be, but well-worn, a few scratches and chipped paint from wear and tear. Rey decided that she liked it more for it. Cars were built for _driving_ and it was clear that the owner of this one had not been content to just let her sit pretty, collecting dust. She circled the vehicle, taking it all in, thanking her lucky stars that she had not called off to join her classmates for a day in Coney Island—what was cotton candy and skeeball compared to the opportunity to dig her elbows into the grease of a classic 1966 Incom T-65B X-wing?

 

Rey was so busy congratulating herself for her good fortune that she completely failed to notice the man leaning against the wall until he cleared his throat, _loudly,_ and she—to her utter mortification— _shrieked_ and leapt straight out of her skin. If she’d been a cat, that probably would’ve counted as two of her nine lives. She hoped that Troade and the other guys hadn’t heard that.

 

 _Car owner,_ Rey’s brain provided once the blaring alarms of stranger-danger had subsided. She sucked in a lungful of air, willing her heart to slow down and hoping she didn’t sound too reproachful when she said, “Customers usually aren’t allowed back here.”

 

“Teng made an exception. Wanted to make sure she was in good hands.” Stepping forward, the man rested his hand just atop the red-orange stripe on the hood, expression fond before he fixed her with his clear blue gaze. “Are you Rey Jakken?”

 

“Yeah.” It came out sounding a lot more defensive than she had intended. “Yes, that’s me.” She pointed at the front pocket of her baggy, dark blue coveralls where her name was stitched in bright yellow thread. That was the trouble with having a unisex sounding name while working in an auto shop: customers were always disappointed to discover that their mechanic was _female,_ and not the macho man like her name might have suggested.

 

“You like cars?”

 

Rey scrunched up her eyebrows at that question. _Obviously,_ she liked cars. Why else would she subject herself to the hours of fume inhalation and asbestos exposure of working in an auto shop if she didn’t?

 

“I _love_ cars,” she answered honestly.

 

But, if this man was at all disappointed by her, he gave none of it away. Rather, he looked downright _amused,_ as if he were privy to some inside joke between him and— _did he just snort at her?_

 

“Think you can have her done by morning?” the man asked, oblivious to Rey’s rising hackles.

 

“Yeah.” Rey decided to stick to business. The work order had indicated a routine inspection and oil change. This guy was probably just another eccentric, if he felt the need to vet the service people for something so minor. New York had a lot of those, she was learning. “No problem. Just let Teng know that you’ll be in for an early pick up on the way out.” Her tone was nonchalant, but she was itching for this man to leave so she could see for herself if this pinnacle of 1960s motor engineering lived up to the old adverts— _the perfect balance of speed and maneuverability_.

 

“Will do.” He tossed her the keychain, which she caught deftly with one hand. He shot her a smile, years lifting off his face, as if he were looking at an old friend. “Thanks, Rey.”

 

It was only later that night, still giddy from her covert little test drive up and down the bridge, as Rey sat in front of the TV and slurped her chow mein while the jaunty guitar riff of Dagobah’s “Only Hope” played in the background of a detergent commercial, that she realized that she’d just met Luke Skywalker.

 

 

*

 

Strings in the air and a supernova in his eyes was how Rey would remember it. He was so close to her that she could see every speckle and mole on his scowling face, the warm glow of holiday cheer only serving to throw the paleness of his skin into sharper contrast against the shock of unruly dark hair, the surrounding glamor and clamor fading into the echo of words spat with fire:

 

“ _I will destroy you.”_

 

Okay. Clearly, this man had a flair for the dramatics. And, he seemed to have already come to some erroneous conclusion about her character, based on—what? One encounter that involved him staring at her stupidly over her doorway and ended with him leaving after thirty seconds of awkward silence and her having to trek across the city to return his wallet— _which,_ she considered with a bit of vindictiveness, remembering the wads of hundred-dollar bills stuffed inside, _could have been very helpful for this month’s rent_. Lucky for him, she was no thief.

 

He was upset about his uncle’s will. That, she understood. She would have been more than happy to explain that the whole thing was just one big cosmic mix-up and that she’d refuse her half—she didn’t even want it in the _first place._ Not to mention, she absolutely, unequivocally wanted nothing to do with whatever family drama of Shakespearian proportions was going on behind closed doors. If only he could have held his tongue for a hot second or, you know, maybe asked her _nicely_.

 

 _He’s a bully_ , the voice of a younger Rey supplied, small but strong, all too familiar with tactics meant to instill fear and intimidation in those viewed as weaker. But he’d misjudged her. In more ways than one. And now, his eyes shone with a challenge that she was more than willing to rise to.

 

Glaring back with embers of her own, chin jutted out in defiance, noses almost touching, their proximity was such that it would have been easy to just rear back and head-butt the lumbering brute _._ But there were too many people around and one did not need lessons in etiquette to know that such a blatant act of violence would be received poorly… probably with an assault charge, as he’d oh so casually mentioned his lawyer. Not to mention that such a foolhardy action would undoubtedly result in more damage to _her_ than it would to him since he was apparently so profoundly thickheaded.

 

But Rey had watched enough movies to know that genteel women in gowns possessed two traditional methods of retaliation against discourteous males: a drink in the face, or…

 

_Well, I don’t have a drink, so that only leaves option number two._

 

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, she could see his brow crease slightly, wariness and confusion skimming the surface of his features, his mouth opening slightly just as—

 

—she lifted her foot and _stomped_ —

 

He yelped in surprise.

 

— _digging_ her heel in for good measure.

 

“Be my fucking guest.”

 

*   *   *

 

The girl had vanished—like a sandstorm, rising up out of nowhere and, remorseless, leaving naught but a trail of destruction in her wake. When he looked up from where he was doubled over, it was another woman gazing at him with concern.

 

“Oh my goodness, are you all right?”

 

“Congresswoman.” Kylo bit back a grimace as he matched face with name.

 

It was Carise Sindian of the 23rd District. A decade younger than his mother, she’d missed the hippie bus and instead hopped on the boogie train—and, if her wardrobe was anything to judge by, she never got off it. Tonight, she was dressed in a gown of duochrome silver, embedded from top to bottom with tiny crystals that glimmered like a million raindrops in the sun with every ruffle of her skirts. To make up for her height, she wore platform heels and piled her dark hair high on her head. Truly, Kylo thought she looked more like a piece of sci-fi concept art than a United States representative. However, despite appearances, he knew that she’d built a reputation for her shrewdness in politics, with a mind for strategy that rivaled that of his mother. Sindian had appeared on the ballot against incumbent Senator Organa six years ago and had lost by a very narrow margin. Kylo suspected that the defeat still smarted, especially considering that was around the time when the press had been foaming at the mouth with stories of _Senator Organa’s scoundrel of a husband—_ he remembered how adamantly the Congresswoman had demanded a recount, as if the very concept of losing was foreign to her.

 

 _The outcome might have been different_ , Kylo mused, _if only they’d gotten ahold of that_ other _headline—_

 

“Please, Kylo, how long have we known each other? Call me Carise.” Kylo was absolutely not going to do that. She flashed a pearly white smile that did not quite reach her eyes—or the rest of her face. _Because of the Botox_. He imagined that the inability to move parts of one’s face could only be an asset when it came to negotiating policies.

 

“I hope you are having a pleasant evening.” Gods above, he despised small talk. These Washington types were worse than the vain, spoiled stars and starlets he’d been forced to engage at industry events. At least there, everyone was either too baked or coked out or drunk or self-obsessed to really give a shit about what other people were saying. Here, it was like they hung off each and every word, waiting for a slip-up so that they could file it away, hardcode it into their permanent drives to be retrieved at a later time to inflict maximum damage. It had been Leia Organa’s favorite trick, both in and out of the Senate, to her son and husband’s endless chagrin. “I was, ah… retying my laces.”  

 

His dry, deadpan answers were usually enough to stop any conversation in its tracks. Kylo could not remember how many times hapless interviewers struggled in vain to get him to be more forthcoming: _What was the hardest part about recording this album?_ Getting the notes right. _Can you name some of your musical inspirations?_ I’ve answered this question before for _Rolling Stone_ — you can Google it. _How would you describe your writing process?_ I don’t use a fucking ghostwriter, if that’s what you mean.

 

Her peal of ringing laughter signaled to him that he wouldn’t be so lucky. Sindian gestured her champagne glass at his notably laceless shoes. “Retying your laces… after the young woman undid them with the heels of her Jimmy Choos?”

 

 _Well, shit._ “We had… a bit of a disagreement,” Kylo sighed, resigned to the fact that there was no escape from this conversation.

 

“That looked like _some_ disagreement,” Sindian tittered. “Not a lover’s quarrel, I hope?”

 

Kylo resisted a derisive snort, his foot starting to throb beneath scuffed leather. “Hardly. We are— _newly_ acquainted.”

 

As if finally catching wind of his reticence, she continued, “Well, whatever it was, I hope it was nothing unsalvageable. _Hell hath no fury,_ and all that. Oh, unless it was about politics. Though, I hope not, because Senator Organa has expressly decreed the topic taboo for the night.”

 

“Your concern is appreciated, Congresswoman. And, I assure you that I will be doing my utmost to uphold my mother’s decree.” Kylo was more than happy to leave the politicking to the professionals.

 

“Speaking of the Senator, she was absolutely _beside herself_ when we received your RSVP—I was in charge of the seating arrangements, you see, and we were all pleasantly surprised to see your name on the guest list—after all, it’s been so long. What was it, four? Five years?”

 

“Six,” said Kylo stiffly.

 

“ _Six years,_ ” Sindian exhaled. “Well, I suppose the important thing is that you’re here now…” She trailed off, her unspoken question hanging in the air like a bug he was determined to ignore—why _now?_

 

“Yes,” was all he said.

 

“Hm.” She smiled, the expression asynchronous with her hawkish stare, which turned to skim the crowd, stopping where Dameron was helping the girl out of her coat and handing it to the attendant just beyond the entrance of the foyer; the latter seemed reluctant to part with it, a shiver running visibly up the notches in her spine to the sharp angles of her shoulder blades. Abruptly, Sindian changed topics. “Lovely little creature, isn’t she? I will say, I was rather surprised to see her here with Dameron.”

 

Kylo sipped at his champagne with an air of indifference, though his interest was piqued. “Wasn’t she invited?” _Liar, thief, and gatecrasher to boot?_

 

“It was a last-minute arrangement, apparently. Originally, he was supposed to be accompanied by one… ‘Finn Storm’? A rather handsome, upstanding young man, if I do say so myself—we spoke at length at last year’s gala and he _assured_ me that flared trousers would be making a comeback sometime soon. Mr. Dameron really does have _excellent_ taste in,” she cleared her throat pointedly before finishing, “friends _._ ”

 

Kylo made no comment on that last part of her statement, tearing his eyes away as Dameron guided her out of sight with a hand on the small of her back. “How last minute?”

 

The Congresswoman sniffed, “ _Extremely._ Not two hours before. I even had to write a replacement name card.”

 

She fixed him with her scrutiny once more, but before she could form her next question, Kylo cut her off. “Excuse me.”

 

“I’ll see you at dinner!” Sindian bleated after him, and this time, with his back to her, he let himself cringe.

 

 _Two hours?_ That was hardly any time at all. In the midst of his flaring temper, he’d failed to consider the possibility that it was simply coincidence that brought the girl here tonight. Certainly, it was _possible,_ though he was loath to believe in coincidences. But, if it was neither a ruse nor a fluke, then what else could it be? _Fate?_ Kylo resisted a self-deprecating chuckle at that; he’d given up on divine providence a long time ago. Still, he couldn’t shake that insistent, nagging feeling in the back of his head, like a _pull,_ like he was forgetting something—

 

Kylo banished the slivers of doubt that began to wedge themselves into the foundations of his certainty and the spike of guilt that came with it. There was no time to explore this ill-timed resurgence of his conscience. Whatever the truth was, the girl was a bump in the road. Nothing more. Kylo knew all about obstacle courses. When up, down, over, and around got you nowhere, sometimes you just had to cut a path through.

 

Sighing, he ducked into the men’s room. His foot was really starting to smart now.

 

*   *   *

  
“Welcome to the team, Red Six.” Poe pretended to wipe a tear from his eye as he pinned the garish red poinsettia boutonniere to the sheer, flimsy sleeve of her gown, ignoring her protests that Finn would kill her if he damaged the fabric. “Your service is much appreciated in our hour of greatest need.”

 

Rey fingered the quintessential holiday shrub beneath her collarbone with distaste. “Where’s _yours?_ ”

 

“Those are for volunteers.” Poe was unaffected by her crossness. “I’m Red Leader, so I don’t need one. Plus, it would clash with my outfit.”

 

Rey smacked his arm as he waggled his eyebrows. “I think it clashes more with _my_ outfit.”

 

“Nonsense, you look amazing. Now get up to the library and stay there ‘til they ring the dinner bell.”

 

“I should have brought my homework,” Rey grumbled.

 

Then, as she turned to go, he called after her. “If you see any oldies, just point them in the right direction. And watch the buff on those stairs!”

 

With a heavy sigh, Rey waved him up and started towards the marble steps that she was told would take her straight up to the third floor.

 

When the Senator had returned with Poe, the latter had grumpily informed her that he’d been recruited for usher duty as a few of the office assistants failed to show up. They claimed illness, but Poe had been quick to clarify that the only thing they had come down with was a case of Christmas blue balls.

 

“ _When the weather outside is frightful… good boys and girls stay home because they’d rather get their bells jingled. If you know what I mean,”_ Poe had offered another euphemism in clarification. Rey assured him that she’d understood him the first time.

 

It would not be anything exciting, Poe had explained, mostly just monitoring the upper levels to make sure that no one was lost and that none of some of the more elderly guests were experiencing any adverse reactions to mixing alcohol with some of their medications, which, Poe had commented with a far-off look, as if he were staring through the fabric of space and time into Christmas gala’s past, happened more often than most people thought.

 

Not looking forward to the prospect of sitting around awkwardly in a room surrounded by strangers, Rey had been eager to volunteer her services.

 

She ascended the marble staircase, taking care to heed Poe’s warning to mind the buff with one hand on the railing. The price for added height was a marked decrease in surefootedness, and she was feeling unbalanced in more ways than one; now that the adrenaline and satisfaction from seeing the look of absolute _shock_ on Kylo Ren’s face was starting to wear off, with it came a slight wobble to her knees and no small amount of dread that the vodka soda Poe had shoved into her hands before sending her off was only _slightly_ helping to take the edge off. There would be a reckoning, Rey was certain, for—quite _literally_ —stepping on the toes of a man like that. And now that anger was no longer clouding her sight, she wasn’t so sure she had made the right choice. Maybe she ought to have made larger effort to explain, to let rationality lead the way, to deal peaceably… even though _he_ was the one who started it—

 

 _Retrospect’s twenty-twenty._ Rey stopped that train of thought before she could wind herself up all over again, wishing for what felt like the thousandth time that she were curled up at home with a steaming mug of cocoa in her cozy knit sweater, unsexy long johns, and warm wool socks. She glanced at the clock face carved into the marbled wall of the stairwell: 6:45 PM. The library, Poe had promised, would be empty— _probably,_ he’d qualified—and, more importantly, _quiet._ At least she’d have a good forty-five minutes to collect her thoughts, and maybe even meditate. It would be helpful, because, as she’d learned from the seating charts posted in the foyer, at dinner she’d be sitting directly across from one _Mr. Benjamin Solo_ and she had a feeling she would need all the peace of mind she could get if she wanted to get through the night without hurling a plate at his head.

 

*   *   *

 

The third floor of the Villard Mansion was still and calm. Occasionally, a bark of laughter or the high strain of strings would carry through from the hum of activity below, but the air here was less… frenetic, and immediately, Rey felt herself relax and unfurl. After a quick survey of the area and peeking her head into every room on the floor confirmed that she was indeed completely and utterly alone, Rey leaned against the nearest wall and removed the horrendous stilts, freeing her aching feet from their contorted prisons, the muscles of her legs _singing_ at the first contact of soft carpet beneath tortured soles.

 

 _My deepest condolences to anyone who has to wear these things on a daily basis,_ Rey sent out into the universe.

 

Mood vastly improved, Rey silently padded into the library. She did not bother with the rows of carefully curated, hardcover tomes lining the walls—these were chosen for their covers and not their contents, meant to decorate and enhance the old-world vibe that seemed to be the selling point for this hotel, a task made more difficult when considering the New York building codes required all exits to be clearly demarcated and illuminated. Instead, she made a beeline for the large, plush armchair that was sat right in front of the fireplace on the far side of the room. It was not lit, but after closer inspection, she discovered that the exit signs were not the only modern enhancement in this room: to her delight, the fireplace was electric. When she flipped the switch hidden beneath the mantel, the flames quickly roared to life and filled the room with warmth.

 

Rey plopped into the chair, neatly lining her shoes and Louis Vuitton clutch—Finn _really_ wasn’t playing games when it came to decking her out in brand names—with the wooden legs and placing her now drained vodka soda next to them. Then, she snuggled into the cushions, adjusting her skirts so that she could comfortably curl up into a ball, tucking her head into the armrest. As she stared into the flames licking up the sides of their stone and glass confines, Rey’s thoughts wandered, wondering how Finn was getting along at work, if the meteorologists were correct in their predictions that the worst of the snowstorm was yet to come, and if her neighbor Teedo ever found his cat, before invariably drifting back to the man she was now tied to through property tax, or whatever, and how her life had been upended so easily by something as simple as the stroke of pen on paper—

 

 _No,_ Rey corrected, recalling the quilted patterns on the photocopied page Maz had shown her. _Paper_ towel.

 

It was just so… so… ridiculous _._ Rey wondered if such a document could even really be counted. Luke had been sick— _pancreatic cancer,_ she remembered Maz mention in passing—and probably doped up on all sorts of painkillers. The whole thing was suspect, like a last-minute decision, or some bad practical joke…

 

 _“He can no longer be here to tell us himself,”_ Maz had said. _“So, we’ll have to make do with the next best thing.”_

 

But was that really true? Was there no one else she could ask?

 

No, there _was_ another. Maz had said something about a sister. But, wouldn’t she have been mentioned in the will? Unless there was more to it? And she couldn’t remember ever hearing about the famous Luke Skywalker having a sister. _Oh,_ maybe she could ask the Senator, since Poe said they were old friends.

 

And, speaking of her dear, good, blessed, just the _best_ friend, Poe—

 

He’d undoubtedly sensed her unease and, knowing she’d never admit to it, sent her up here under the pretense of giving her work to do. So much for ushering the delirious elderly. _Thanks Poe. You really did me—_ she yawned widely _— a solid…_

 

Rey had only meant to rest her eyes, but the fire was warm and the cushions soft and the entire floor blissfully empty. The girl who’d grown up sleeping on tartan mats, squeezed in a room with ten other children, beneath an endless, cold desert sky—that girl _basked_ in the luxury, and, before she knew it, she was lulled to sleep by the sound of crackling logs feeding an electric flame.

 

*   *   *

 

 _Never go to sleep angry, or you’ll have bad dreams,_ was what Breha Organa had always said to her headstrong daughter whenever they fought, ever gentle even in chastisement. _And never break bread after an argument, or all the food will taste sour._

 

 _Yes,_ her father would agree in a serious tone. _It’s much better manners to wait_ after _a meal to argue._

 

Leia Organa recalled these memories of her adopted parents fondly; she’d always known that she wasn’t _really_ their daughter. For one, she hardly looked anything like them, her skin pale where theirs was lovely and tanned, her hair brown where theirs was black and deep. She’d been six years old and precocious and doing her own reading on Punnett squares when she asked her father for the first time who her _biological parents_ were, and Bail Organa had told her the truth as he’d understood it: that her mother had died in childbirth and that her father, unable to bear the grief of her going where he could not follow, took his own life to be with her. They were together in heaven, he’d told her, and that was that.

 

Of course, that hadn’t been the _whole_ truth. It would be years later before Leia would learn from the adoption agency that she’d had a twin brother, too, and that he’d also been looking for her. But by then, the souls of Bail and Breha had already departed from this world— _too soon_ —unable to answer the questions that burned in her young heart. _Did you know? If you knew, then why did you keep it from me?_

 

The answers were there, inside her. She only needed to skim the surface of the memories of her happy childhood to know that her parents had wanted to spare her the burden of bearing the Skywalker name, and the ghosts that came with it.

 

Later down the road, Leia had tried passing on the lessons of her kind and gentle mother to her own family—but never going to sleep angry and never breaking bread after an argument was easier said than done in a family full of hotheads, and on more than one occasion, she found herself breaking her own rules, sometimes both in the same night. She’d learned the hard way that it was better not to deal in absolutes, that compromise meant meeting the other person halfway, or, at least, _trying_ to. Han had taught her that.

 

 _No_ , they’d taught each other.

 

But he was gone, and now, so was Luke. _Am I doomed to watch everyone that I love leave before me?_ An uncharacteristically fatalistic thought. She shrugged it off, letting it fall away like a shawl from her shoulders. _Not everyone. Not if I can help it._

 

With these memories swirling in her head, Leia was acutely aware of the irony of her current situation, a double-edged sword. She’d hoped this could wait at least until after dinner, but he was his father’s son— _her_ son—and patience wasn’t a virtue that ran in the family. And this, all this, could have been prevented if she’d only been honest with him about their family from the start. There was some truth, after all, to that saying about children being doomed to repeat the mistakes of their parents, she thought as she followed him up the steps, and— _did he get taller?—_ as he led her into an empty room, the doors shutting behind them with an air of finality.

 

For a moment, the only sounds were the hissing and crackling of the fire burning in hearth in the corner. When he turned to face her, her heart ached at the steel in his expression. _Who taught you to hide your emotions like that?_

 

“Mother,” he said with cold formality, and Leia felt her heart ache for another reason entirely— _that,_ without a doubt, he’d learned from her. “I hope there are no illusions behind the reason for my attendance tonight.”

 

“Ben—”

 

“The papers,” he interrupted. “I only came here to collect them. I believe you have been in contact with my agent.”

 

Leia made a sound most unbefitting for a New York Senator. “You mean that slimy, repugnant weasel of a man? Yes, we may have spoken once or twice.” She sighed. “I know you’re still angry with me, but I thought after all this time… _Ben—”_

 

“I didn’t come here to reminisce about the past,” her son spat, and Leia wondered how it was that someone could be so familiar and yet so _foreign._ “Do you have them or not?”

 

*   *   *

 

Rey did not know how long she had been asleep, but as she slowly blinked back to awareness, she could hear a woman’s voice, hushed and pleading and increasingly urgent:

_“He was my_ brother. _I saw what the Skywalker name did to him—it followed him like a shadow his whole life, all the good he tried to do, everything he put out into the world—only for it to be taken and twisted, dissected and put under a microscope, compared to the legacy of an evil, selfish bastard who couldn’t stick around long enough to be father to his own children! I didn’t want what happened to Luke to happen to you! All I ever did was to protect you from that, can’t you see?”_

 

 _“Are we talking about your father or mine?”_ another voice responded, low, scornful, and _familiar. “All you ever did was to protect your precious seat of influence.”_

Rey felt every muscle fiber in her body go rigid, her heart suddenly beating wildly in her chest as she realized she was, in this moment, very much on the other side of those closed doors, unwittingly listening in on the family drama that seemed to be so determined to ensnare her. She dared not move, at once grateful that the armchair was facing away from them and knowing that it was much too late to make herself known _now,_ hoping that the thundering inside her ribs only sounded like that to _her—_

 

_“You know that isn’t true, Ben. Your father and I, we did—”_

_“Han Solo was as much a father to me as Anakin Skywalker was to you.”_

“Ben _—”_

_“You know that’s not my name anymore.”_

_“I don’t care what that stupid piece of paper says. As long as I’m breathing, you’ll_ always _be my Ben.”_

 

God, she wanted to die. This was not a conversation that she ever wanted to hear, not in a million years. Heat bloomed in her chest, a mix of shame, guilt, and, even if she would never admit it aloud, _resentment._ Here was a man who, along with the strappings of fame and wealth, had a mother who _loved_ him. He was blessed in ways that she could only ever dream of, and here he was, on Christmas Eve, being absolutely _horrible_ to a woman who only wanted to reconnect with her son.

 

There was a long silence, no longer filled by the merry crackling of the fire, which had switched itself off sometime during their conversation. She was glad she could not see the looks on their faces. At last, it was Senator Organa who spoke, sounding tired and resigned:

 

_“I have the papers with me in the car. If you stay for dinner, I’ll get them to you after. Okay?”_

A pause, and then, _“Fine.”_

 

Rey waited until the door clicked shut and heavy footfalls faded before she sighed, releasing a long shuddering breath that she did not even know she’d been holding, the tension leaving her body as she uncurled her legs and stretched them out, boneless, her mind struggling to catch up to the revelation that _Luke Skywalker_ was actually Senator Organa’s twin brother. It sort of made sense, in a weird way, why they’d want to keep that information out of the public eye. Rey did not know the name Anakin Skywalker, but if they were talking about Luke’s father, then that could only mean _Darth Vader,_ and even she knew the story of how the promising young artist had taken his own life and twenty young ones in one fell swoop. No drugs in his system. Just a wet road on a rainy day. A national tragedy. Some people said wrong place wrong time; an accident. Most believed he’d gone off the rails after his lover died and wanted to go out with a bang. Others, and they were louder, were convinced he was part of a cult, and that his death had been part of a ritual suicide—those theories still floated around, immortalized on the internet.

 

 _This is some soap drama level bullshit,_ Rey could hear Finn say in her head, and she would have to agree.

 

As if on cue, her phone chimed in her bag— _loudly._

 

“ _Shit,”_ Rey cursed, fumbling with the latch, her heart stopping for the second time in the span of the last ten minutes— _so much for clearing your mind—_ deeply regretting her decision to set her text alert to the sound effect from _Metal Gear Solid._ Quickly setting her phone to vibrate, she glanced at the time: 7:20 PM, before checking the message.

 

> **_Finn [19:19]_ ** _Thirty-three issues deep into Vogue Paris. Too whimsical. Brain melting. Send reinforcements (and by reinforcements, I mean cute selfies of you and my boyfriend and all the delicious food that I’m not eating)._

 

Tucking her clutch under her arm and grabbing her shoes in one hand, she typed out her reply with the other as she made for the exit—

 

> **_Rey [19:21]_ ** _Roger that. Incoming shortly._

 

—and pressed send, still looking down at the screen as the little grey bubble appeared instantly to signal that Finn was typing a reply, and—

 

—promptly dropped everything in her hands as she collided with a large, broad, and _very solid_ frame.

 

Rey yelped in surprise and leapt back, finding herself for the second time that night on the receiving end of Kylo Ren’s glare.

 

She wished she’d put on her heels first, because without them, he towered over her, looking every bit as intimidating in his all-black regalia as the devil himself. He folded his arms across his chest, mouth twisted into a scowl.

 

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that eavesdropping is a nasty hobby?”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So to clarify, in this modern AU, Anakin Skywalker a la Darth Vader was a musician who killed himself by crashing his car into a school bus :( and the reason why Leia wanted to keep her relation to him from being public knowledge was to keep it from affecting softboi Ben as it negatively affected Luke's career, but he is convinced she did it only to maintain her political power (she nearly lost the election when press got ahold of Han Solo's dirty dealings). I wanted the severity of what he did in canon (murdering the younglings) to translate to this universe. Hope that makes sense and everyone is okay with it! 
> 
> One, maybe two more chapters of the gala before we can let the past die ala Crylo Ren style.
> 
> Also: do you guys like the longer chapter/less frequent updates or shorter chapters/more frequent updates? Personally, I think I like the first one better because I think I'm able to better organize that way, but I'd love to hear your thoughts and any other feedback you may have! :D
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Honorable mentions:**
> 
>  
> 
> [Ivano Troade](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ivano_Troade)
> 
>  
> 
> [Dagobah](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dagobah)
> 
>  
> 
> [Bail](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bail_Organa) and [Breha](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Breha_Organa) Organa
> 
>  
> 
> Comments and kudos keep me alive when coffee cannot
> 
> Also, I have a [tumblr](http://skytraveller.tumblr.com) where you can find my Star Wars/Reylo shrine. Recruiting all Reylos who are BESOTTED BY THY SUN MOON DICHOTOMY ok that's enough internet for today  
> peace,  
> kat


	7. Dinner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY CRAP GUYS 800 KUDOS! WHAT??! :') I am so blown away by the response this fic is getting! I love and appreciate you all for joining me in my little corner of this massive, beautiful trash compactor <3  
>  **NOTE:** I changed the flashback of Rey meeting Luke from 2 years ago to 1 year ago (bc I suck at timelines and dates and routinely forget people's birthdays).

*

 

“I _told_ you,” Rey groused, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead with her gloved hand. At seven in the morning, it was already sweltering hot in the back of Teng Malar’s, the whirring fan in the corner serving only to blow humid air back in her face, a consequence of the early-October heatwave that sprang seemingly out of nowhere. “Customer’s aren’t supposed to be back here.”

 

Sometime while she’d been elevating the electric blue Kia with the jack stand and loosening the lug nuts on the wheels, Luke Skywalker had snuck into the garage, quiet as sun on sand, and was now perched on the corner of her workbench, thumbing through her _Intro to Engineering and Design_ binder with interest. He looked every bit as monkish as the gossip sites and magazines alluded to with his gauzy, tan-colored tunic and loose-fitting trousers of a similar shade, like he’d just returned from a meditation retreat in the Himalayas. Rey tried to reconcile _this_ Luke Skywalker with tight-jean wearing, long-haired vagabond youth he’d been in his Dagobah days. Then, she remembered the video she’d stumbled across from her late-night YouTube trawl: the one of Luke—in similar garb and about the same amount of grey in his beard— _crowdsurfing_ at a Zeppelin tribute concert, just him and several beach balls before they passed him to the stage and he climbed onto it, finishing off the set with a show-stopping performance of “Dazed and Confused,” guitar solo and all. And then it didn’t seem so hard to believe.

 

“That for flu season?” Rey gestured towards the yellow mask covering his mouth and nose. An odd thing to wear, considering the heat.

 

He smiled at her mildly—or at least, Rey imagined he did as the corners of his eyes crinkled up. “It would be inadvisable for me to get sick right now.”

 

“You’re telling me. I got a calc quiz and an English paper due tomorrow.” She tossed the lug wrench into toolbox with a loud, metallic _clang,_ missing the slight tremble of his hands as he closed her binder and placed it back on the bench. “Bug’s been going around. Nearly a third of the faculty’s out sick. Not my English professor though—” Rey cleared her throat. “Which is uh, very fortunate. So, early pick up?”

 

“You got it,” Luke replied, voice sounding thinner somehow, as if he had waned between now and last afternoon. He got up to follow her, and as the sun hit his face, Rey noticed that his skin had a sallow tinge to it. She frowned.

 

“Hey. You don’t look so good. You sure you’re not coming down with something? We’ve got some Emergen-C in the break room.”

 

Another eye crinkle. “I’m just a little tired.”

 

Rey nodded. “The heat’ll do that to you. Especially with how humid it gets out here.” They both breathed an audible sigh of relief as they stepped into the cool, air-conditioned front office. “I’ll take a nice, dry one-oh-five over a muggy eighty-seven any day.” Rey thought about the hour bike ride from here to campus and decided that today was definitely going to be a subway day.

 

“Where are you from?”

 

Her expression was wry. “Originally? Overseas.” The half-truth rolled off her tongue more easily than outright lies, a skill that came with practice, like differential equations, or balancing tires. After all, the tale of how she’d been abandoned in a foreign country at the tender age of four wasn’t exactly a story that she was eager to share with _anyone_ , let alone strangers. “But if you mean before I moved to the city, I used to live in this little town in Arizona.”

 

A strange look crossed his face that Rey found difficult to read with the lower half of it covered. “Arizona, huh?”

 

“Yeah, you ever been?”

 

“I was just out there recently, in fact.” He studied her. “Seeing about an old friend.”

 

“Did you take the X-wing?” Off his curious glance, she elaborated, “Cos you’ve got a lot of sand damage and there are no deserts this side of the Mississippi.”

 

“I did.” He nodded. “In retrospect, a cross-country trip was probably a bit much for an old girl like her, and I probably should’ve tried to park her in the shade to avoid this whole gasket issue, but… there’s just something about driving through the desert… no one around you for miles,” his gaze faraway, and the desert-dweller in Rey knew exactly what he meant, could tell that he was imagining the— “open road stretching on and on beneath an endless blue sky… and you’re the only person for miles…” he trailed off wistfully, and Rey caught a glimpse of the bright-hearted young man he must have been. “Plus, she still handles like a dream, doesn’t she?”

 

 _The perfect balance of speed and maneuverability,_ Rey wanted to say, thinking about her joyride from the previous night: windows rolled down, hot city air against her face and neck, combing through her hair, NYPD out of sight. Outwardly, she only shrugged, staring him straight in his twinkling blue eyes but unable to help the slight tilt of her lips as she replied, “If you say so.”

 

After she took his payment—refusing his offer to pay full price, which was only in _part_ due to her guilt for borrowing his car—and gave him his receipt and keys, he asked, “What part of Arizona did you say you were from again?”

 

“I didn’t.”

 

“Care to share?”

 

Rey shrugged. “You wouldn’t know it even if I told you. It’s the middle of nowhere.” Her thoughts drifted back to her early teenage years, watching the birds circle in the cloudless sky, getting sunburned from falling asleep in the shade and waking up on scorching ground, combing through her Auntie Mash’s scrapyard, looking for parts to tinker around with. Because what else was there to do in a town where the only other kids were either too young to keep up with her or too busy making fun of her for living with the local, batty _junk lady?_

 

“Try me.”

 

“Mos Eisley.”

 

Luke blinked at her.

 

“I told you, you wouldn’t know it,” Rey laughed. “Population five thousand, as of last year—until I left for school, that is. Most exciting thing that ever happened there was when these ahhh—” She swallowed the profanity, thinking back to Troade scolding her for her pottymouth _._ “—out of towners tried to steal gas from my aunt for their luxury RV. Not exactly a hub of arts and culture, you know? We were still using dial-up until about five years ago.”

 

Luke’s eyes crinkled again, and he sounded bemused and—there it was again, that feeling like he was laughing _at_ her. “Do you miss it?”

 

“Sometimes,” Rey answered honestly. While she lived there, she remembered hating the deafening silence of the desert and how lonely it made her feel, especially at night. Now that she lived in the city, she was surrounded by noise and people, all the time, and at first, she thought that was better. But now, she was learning that loneliness came in different shades. “It’s different.”

 

“I know what you mean.”

 

Rey doubted it. Some things had to be lived.

 

“I’ve been thinking of taking up motor biking again.”

 

Rey quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah. I’ve got this old Landspeeder sitting in my garage, collecting dust. Sorosuub X-34. Hasn’t run in years. Think you could take a look at it?”

 

“If you can get her here, yeah, no problem.”

 

“Good.” Then, with a pep in his step that had not been there before, Luke Skywalker turned to leave, jingling his keys at her over his shoulder. “Then I’ll see ya around, kiddo.”

 

Rey gave him a little wave as he left, watching as he pulled the X-wing out of the lot, disappearing in a streak of white and red down the street.

 

 _See ya around_ , he’d said, promising they’d meet again. Rey didn’t know why exactly, but she found herself almost looking forward to it.

 

Still, even if they didn’t meet again, she wouldn’t mind. Rey knew all about managing expectations. Sometimes _see you around_ still meant goodbye.

 

 

*

 

 

 

Kylo had known something was amiss from the moment he walked into the room.

 

The first clue had been the heat. It was exceedingly bad form to leave a fire unattended. Even worse to leave it in a _library_ of all places, where the walls were lined with kindling, dry pages that probably hadn’t been touched since they were placed there.

 

The second had come halfway into the conversation with his mother. While she’d been going on about how lies were for his own good, he’d been looking off into the hearth across the room, as the flames sputtered and crackled, a final spark before fizzling out, the light catching on something—a tiny silver buckle belonging to a familiar heel peeking out from behind the armchair.

 

Kylo did not believe in luck, but he was starting to rethink his stance on curses _._ The girl that had appeared out of nowhere—suddenly popping up _everywhere._ Now, as they studied each other in the hallway outside the library, the look of trepidation on the girl’s face suggested that she was thinking something along the same lines— _ugh, not_ you _again._

 

His hand twitched at his side, the echoes of gentlemanly manners hammered into him from a young age, of another lifetime, urging him to help her pick up her things. Kylo quickly squashed that ridiculous notion. It had been a long while since anyone could accuse him of being a gentleman, and he wasn’t about to reclaim the title now just because of a pretty, infuriating girl in a dress—

 

 _Pretty?_ Alarm bells sounded off in his head. _Pretty infuriating. No comma._

 

Folding his arms across his chest, he glowered down at her imperiously. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that eavesdropping is a nasty habit?”

 

The effect was instantaneous, the trepidation melting off her face as she took the defensive, mimicking his motion by crossing her own arms, a motion made doubly distracting due to the plunging neckline of her dress along with the violently red boutonniere weighing down the flimsy fabric above her heart. “I _wasn’t_ eavesdropping,” she retorted. “It’s not my fault you decided to air it out while I was—”

 

“Snoring?”

 

“I _don’t—_ ” She huffed irritably, taking a deep breath. “I’m _not_ going to say—you know what? Never mind.”

 

As she made to brush past him and collect her things, Kylo sidestepped, easily blocking her path, his larger frame dwarfing hers. Without her heels, she barely came up to his shoulders, and she actually had to crane her neck up to glare at him.

 

“Get out of my way.”

 

“No.”

 

“ _Move.”_

 

“We’re not done here.”

 

Her eyes flared at him like a forest fire. “I think we are. Or have you already forgotten how you told me to _fuck off_ back to wherever the hell it is I came from?” she hissed, teeth bared, the sharp edge of her fury blunted by the faint marks Kylo noticed on her left cheek, imprints from sleep. Her hair was mussed, too, a few chestnut tendrils escaping from their twisting arrangement, falling to frame her face and curling slightly at the ends.

 

“I forget nothing,” Kylo replied coolly. “You’re the one forgetting about my other stipulation: the NDA—"

 

“No way.”

 

“—I need to know exactly what you heard in there so I know what to include in it.”

 

“I’m not signing anything.”

 

“You will.”

 

“ _Won’t.”_

 

Kylo sighed impatiently. “Don’t be childish. Of course, I don’t expect your cooperation in this matter to come freely. You will be compensated for your silence.”

 

“ _Childish?”_ she spat the word like the taste of it was offensive to her. “ _You’re_ the childish one if you seriously think that threaten first and ask questions later is a good way of getting what you want.”

 

“Good? Certainly not. But as long as I get results, the morality of my methods is immaterial.”

 

“If that’s what you think, then you really _are_ a child.”

 

Through the filter of memory, the words morphed, becoming a scornful hiss of disappointment that he would allow grief and sentiment to interfere with his work: _You’re nothing more than a child._

 

Suddenly, Kylo crowded her, entering her personal space with one step. She firmly stood her ground, refusing to be cowed, the only evidence of her apprehension in the barest tremor of bottom lip as she swallowed, and his eyes flickered down, unbidden, as if pulled by an invisible string, to follow the movement of her throat, down the creamy path of skin suggested by the delicate opal resting atop her sternum, rising at her sharp intake of breath.

 

“You’re one to talk, _pipsqueak,”_ Kylo replied, voice low and taunting.

 

In the next moment, he was stumbling backwards, shoved with more force than he had expected from such slender arms. He caught himself at the last second, a jolt of pain shooting through the arch of his injured foot and up his calf as he did so.

 

“You’re disgusting.” Her red, indignant face told him that his lack of subtlety had not gone unnoticed.

 

“Disgusting, am I?” Kylo sneered. “Then why are you blushing, _Rey?”_

 

Before she could respond, they were interrupted by the chime of the dinner bell, followed by the clipped, electronically modulated tones of Congresswoman Sindian’s voice crackling on through hidden speakers:

 

_“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you are all enjoying the hor d’oeuvres and libations. The time is seven-thirty, and we now invite all guests to join us in the Madison Room, located on the second floor, where a fabulous dinner prepared by our two-star Michelin chef, Strono Tuggs, will be served shortly. Merry Christmas!”_

 

Before he could stop her, she’d snatched up her things, quick as lightning, and spared him one last withering glance before scurrying away.

 

*   *   *

 

The Madison Room of Villard Mansion was a large banquet hall with tall coffered ceilings, bearing intricate designs of a Renaissance flavor and gilded in rich, yellow-gold, each square panel bisected by pale marble, swirled through with skeins of deep green. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, bathing the pristine white-clothed tables, laid out with polished silverware and fine china, in soft, diffused light.

 

Unfortunately, Rey was in no mood to appreciate the splendor.

 

If Poe noticed that Rey had returned with an even darker cloud above her head than when she’d left to find inner peace _,_ he said nothing. Instead, he just guided her over to the table, which was at the dead center in front of the podium and raised stage, adjacent to where the string quartet from earlier had relocated and were continuing their peaceful, ambient renditions of popular holiday music.

 

But before they could be seated, they were stopped by a woman in a gown cut from the same cloth as the chandeliers above.

 

“Congresswoman Sindian,” Poe greeted with a polite smile.

 

“Mr. Dameron,” Sindian returned, though her dark, kohl-rimmed eyes were fixed on Rey, who got the distinct impression that she was being dissected. “And who is your lovely friend?”

 

“This is Rey Jakken,” Poe introduced. “Rey, Congresswoman Sindian of the 21st District.”

 

“Hello.”

 

“Pleasure,” Sindian smiled, making Rey think that she meant anything but. Then, the woman’s eyes narrowed on the poinsettia on her gown. “Goodness, I hope Mr. Dameron did not bring you here under false pretenses. Pawning off your duties to your date? For shame.” She held out her hand expectantly, bronzed hands narrow with long, pointed fingernails painted silver. “I’ll take that back now, dear.”

 

Rey did not have to be told twice and was not sorry to see the ugly thing go, dropping it in the woman’s waiting claws without hesitation, who then vanished in a ruffle of sparkling skirts to collect the pins from the others.

 

As they found their seats, Rey blanched as she read the name cards, noting with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she would be sitting directly across from one _Mr. Benjamin Solo_.

 

She thanked whatever lucky stars above that, at least, she was not sitting _next_ to him.

 

A black spot entered into the periphery of her vision, and Rey staunchly resisted the urge to turn, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. As he entered her line of sight, she ventured a furtive glance, noting with no small surge of pride that there was a slight limp to his step that had not been there before.

 

_Hmph. Serves you right._

 

*   *   *

 

The first course of dinner was preluded by something called an _amuse-bouche._ While she did not know what that meant, Rey certainly _was_ amused when the waiters placed before her a plate that was remarkably empty save a large ceramic spoon holding a single prawn, covered in sauce and garnished with one, tiny coriander leaf.

 

Thinking it was meant to be eaten in one bite like the hor d'oeuvres that had been served at the reception, Rey plucked it up by the tail and popped it into her mouth. It was rich, succulent, and slightly spicy, and Rey had to resist a moan. It tasted so much better than the dried and fried variety that she was used to from the Thai place she usually ordered from. She was licking some sauce off her fingers when she heard a high-pitched peal of laughter erupt from across the table.

 

The sound originated from Congresswoman Sindian, who seemed to have taken a keen interest in Rey after their brief introduction. She held a hand to her mouth, hiding a smile that did not reach her eyes. But when she spoke, her tone was light and cordial: “No. Like _this_.”

 

Folding back a gossamer, bell-shaped sleeve, Congresswoman Sindian gracefully picked up her own serving by the ceramic spoon to demonstrate the proper method of consumption.

 

“Oh.” Rey felt her face heat and managed a polite smile. “Thank you.” She was not so much embarrassed by her fine dining faux pas than by the fact that it had been pointed out in front of the man seated directly to the Congresswoman’s left. To her chagrin, it quickly became apparent that Kylo Ren’s brutish temperament did not extend to his table manners.

 

He’d chewed his own _amuse-bouche_ with an almost military efficiency and sat rigid and straight-backed in his seat, elbows off the table, large fingers curled around the stem of the wine glass tipped to his lips as he observed the exchange with the impassive, bored air of someone who had sat through countless dinners just like this. It occurred to her, belatedly, that he probably _had_ sat through countless dinners just like this in the course of his mother’s lengthy political career. The Senator was notably absent from her own seat, off attending to her duties as hostess and leaving her son to fend for himself. Rey tempered her disappointment, knowing that she couldn’t very well broach the subject of Luke— _her brother—_ in present company.

 

They looked nothing alike, Rey thought privately to herself, remembering the late-musician’s sandy-brown and grey hair, twinkling blue eyes, and lean frame. With a mop of thick, black hair, brown eyes, and broad shoulders, it was difficult to believe that they were related. Even his resemblance to his mother was limited, as the Senator was so petite. He must take after his father, Rey guessed.

 

 _Pipsqueak,_ he’d called her. Of all the insults he’d flung at her, _this_ was the one that chafed the most, mostly because of the utter _condescension_ with which he said it— _while_ looking down her dress, no less! The nerve! She was five-foot-five, thank you very much, and perfectly _normal_ height for a female. _Sorry we can’t all be giant ogres!_

 

As if summoned by train of thought, or perhaps under the weight of her scrutiny, he abruptly looked up, their eyes locking across the flickering candlelight, holding for a moment before she quickly looked away in favor of her own glass of rosé.

 

“I didn’t know we were serving alcohol to minors,” his low voice carried across the table.

 

Rey’s eyes snapped back up to find him still staring at her coolly. _So much for being safe at dinner…_

 

“I’m not a minor,” Rey primly corrected. “I’ll be twenty in April.”

 

He merely arched a brow at her. “Last time I checked, legal drinking age in the States was still twenty-one.”

 

“Oh, come now, Ren!” The booming voice came from a younger Congressman who was sat on the otherside of Sindian named Ran Casterfo, Rey recalled from the name cards. Despite Kylo’s own card reading ‘Benjamin Solo,’ she noticed that no one at the table had called him that. “You’re not telling me that you never snuck a beer or two?”

 

“I don’t see the harm in a little glass of wine with a holiday meal,” Admiral Ackbar remarked.

 

Congresswoman Meena Tills nodded in agreement, leaning in towards Rey, and whispering conspiratorially, “I promise I won’t tell.”

 

“It seems you have been outvoted.” Casterfo jovially clapped Kylo on the back, the former’s pinked cheeks indicating that he’d been taking full advantage of the open bar down stairs, while the latter looked ready to chop the man’s hand off for touching him. Rey hid her smirk behind a delicate sip, raising her brow at him in triumph.

 

The waiters moved in unison to replace the empty dishes with the first official course—a bright orange aromatic roasted butternut squash soup—and Poe slowly and deliberately poised his hand next to the spoon furthest to his right, catching her eye to let her know this was for her benefit, to which she responded with a small smile of gratitude.

 

As the table dug into their soup course, Congresswoman Sindian addressed Rey once more.

 

“So, Miss Jakken, are you a student?”

 

Rey took her time swallowing her spoonful of savory-sweet soup, wondering how many more times she’d have to answer this question. “Yes, Congresswoman. I’m a second-year aerospace engineering student at NYU.”

 

“Top of her class, too,” Poe chimed in, jolting slightly when she kicked him under the table without tearing her eyes from her plate. He made a show of scooting forward in his chair when he was actually shifting himself away from her next strike. “We’re trying to snatch her up an internship tonight.”

 

Casterfo perked up from his seat next to Congresswoman Sindian, regarding Rey with renewed interest. “Ah, well, if it’s an aerospace internship you’re after, then SpaceX is the way to go.”

 

Rey’s eyes widened, annoyance with Poe suddenly forgotten. “SpaceX?” She had always thought of the corporation with a dreamlike wistfulness, what with their glittering vision of one day setting sail for the stars. But, they were based in California and so Rey had never considered it seriously.

 

Sindian wrinkled her nose in blatant distaste. “You mean the company that wants to ship everyone to Mars?”

 

“Not everyone. Only the good ones.” Poe’s pithy response earned a chuckle from Casterfo, while Sindian pursed her lips.

 

“That’s their ultimate goal, to pave the way for humanity to become a multiplanetary species. Mars is the closest, and there’s water there, so it’s the most feasible first step,” Casterfo explained readily, like a switch had been flipped in his head, and suddenly taking on a more academic tone. “But they also engage in other ventures.”

 

“What, you mean like shooting rockets into the atmosphere?” Sindian scoffed.

 

“Amongst other things. They’re also working on developing global broadband internet via orbiting satellite constellations, but yes. If their mission is to achieve interplanetary space travel, that does means require shooting rockets into the atmosphere.”

 

“Next stop: _everywhere,_ ” Poe added with a grin. “I like the sound of that.”

 

“ _And_ they’re working on a suborbital rocket transport system.” Rey leaned forward excitedly. “Anywhere on Earth in under an hour. I mean, it’s still in the research and development phase, but it’s a _brilliant_ idea that no one else—”

 

“Commercial rockets?” Kylo interjected. “Sounds like a logistical nightmare. The gravitational forces from acceleration and deceleration during atmospheric reentry would be too much for the average passenger to endure, not to mention the potential for radiation exposure, the cost for fuel, the need for additional security checks, the added air traffic...” he trailed off. “Plus, you need look no further than Elon Musk’s Twitter to see record of their… explosive results.”

 

“Hmph! Too right!” Sindian sniffed in agreement. “I think I’ll stick to a nap in first class with a neck pillow and an Ambien.”

  
Rey stared, wondering if she really just heard the words _gravitational forces_ and _atmospheric reentry_ come out of his mouth. “Of course, there will be failures along the way,” she conceded. “Nothing worth doing is ever easy.”

 

Poe crossed his arms, goading, “Wow, _Solo_. Is _this_ why you’re taking a break from recording? Studying to become a rocket scientist?”

 

Kylo was quick to fire back. “Not at all, _Dameron._ I leave that to the experts. But, unlike some, my interests extend beyond fetching the Senator’s dry cleaning and polishing my car.”

 

“I think,” Casterfo interjected, wisely recognizing the potential for the conversation to spiral from verbal sparring to _actual_ fisticuffs, “we are getting off-topic. Returning to my original proposal, Miss Jakken: if it’s an aerospace internship you seek, my father is familiar with one of the managers involved with satellite development at SpaceX. If you’d like, I can pass along a copy of your resume.”

 

“That’s very kind of you—”

 

“I wouldn’t waste the effort, Congressman. My mother has already offered her an introduction with Bribbs.” Kylo spared her a scathing glance. “And was summarily refused.”

 

Rey bristled. “I think the Senator’s son has misunderstood me.” _Once again,_ deliberately. “I told Senator Organa that while I am not looking for an internship _at this time_ , that I greatly appreciate the offer and would keep it in mind.”

 

“Well, as you probably know, SpaceX is based in California. This would be for a twelve-week position starting in June. I can’t guarantee you a spot, but I _can_ guarantee you an interview. Your travel and housing expenses would be taken care of, obviously. So, if you find yourself in the mood for a California summer…” He passed her a business card. “Shoot me an email.” Then, in a lower, conspiratorial tone, “We can keep this a secret from Senator Organa, as I would not like enter into a competition I would surely lose.”

 

 _These people must have wealth and opportunity leaking from their ears_. Rey thought back to how it had taken her two whole months, subsisting by doing odd jobs off Craigslist and helping out in Plutt’s Laundromat, to find an auto shop willing to hire her. She’d been here less than two hours, and already she’d been offered internships twice. Prestigious ones. It chafed at her meritocratic sensibilities.

 

Still, Casterfo seemed like a nice person and _genuinely_ passionate about the subject.

 

“Thank you _so_ much, Congressman Casterfo. You really are _too kind._ ” And maybe because of the daggers she could feel someone shooting her way, she ate her own words and laid it on thick. “I _will_ keep it in mind.”

 

*   *   *

 

For the second course, which was a scallop salad, Rey thought that she handled herself admirably; she didn’t use her fingers and chose the correct fork, which, in her mind, was victory enough.

 

Conversation at the table was sparse after that. Congresswoman Tills and Admiral Ackbar were content to quietly chat amongst themselves and otherwise focused on their meals, enjoying the seafood. Poe would occasionally lean over to make a snarky comment or observation and, more than once, she felt the telltale prickle of hairs on the back of her neck, but whenever she looked up Kylo would be looking somewhere else.

 

His mood seemed to grow blacker as the night dragged on, in no small part, Rey guessed, due to Congresswoman Sindian chattering incessantly next to him, seemingly taking their earlier agreement over the impracticality of travel by rocket to be a sign of comradery. She did not seem put off by his lack of response—a curt nod here, a twitch of his under eye there—in fact, this only seemed to spur her further. It was only when Senator Organa took the podium that Kylo abruptly turned away from her, resuming his rigid posture as a veil dropped over his face and all signs of irritation vanished behind an impassive mask, focused intently on his mother as she opened her mouth to speak:

 

“Honored guests and esteemed colleagues. I hope you’re all enjoying your meals and drinks so far, and I thank you for joining me here tonight for the 18th Annual Christmas Charity Gala here at the Palace Hotel. Each year, I am blown away by your generosity and commitment to giving back to the community. This year, it gives me great pleasure to announce that our projected total of 2.5 million will be donated in full to the cancer research department at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.”

 

The room erupted into scattered, light applause, to which Rey joined in as well, though, she noted that Kylo’s hands remained in his lap, clenched tightly into fists.

 

The Senator smiled magnanimously before continuing, “As some of you may know, this is an issue that is very close to my heart. A few weeks ago, someone very dear to me lost the battle to pancreatic cancer.” She took some time to talk about the rates of treatment success, remission, and recurrence. “It is my hope that with the money raised today, the good doctors, nurses, researchers, and clinicians at NYPH can bring us one step closer to winning the war against this devastating disease that affects so many. And now, before you all dig into your entrées, I’d like to propose a toast: to Luke Skywalker. Most of you knew him as the rock star and, well, that’s true. But, to me, he was more than that.”

 

Rey tensed in her seat. Across from her, Kylo’s knuckles had gone ghostly white. _Was she…?_

The Senator, unshed tears glimmering in her eyes, continued, voice wavering slightly, “He was… he was my _best friend_. May he continue to shine a light on the lives of others through the legacy of the music that he has left behind.” The Senator wiped at her eyes, raising a glass into the air. “To Luke.”

 

“To Luke!” the room echoed, all glasses raising into the air—except for one. No one seemed to notice but Rey, who had been observing him through the bubbles of her champagne glass. All color had drained from Kylo’s face, and he was staring, a look of abject horror on his face, at a fixed point just beyond his mother’s shoulder. Then, abruptly, he excused himself and stormed out of the hall.

 

As soon as his figure disappeared, Rey saw Sindian leaned over, gleefully whispering none-too-quietly to a frowning Casterfo, “I _told_ you. Before the third course.”

 

Rey felt the coil of dislike tighten into a knot inside her stomach.

 

As the remaining courses were served and cleared, culminating with the long-awaited cream puffs—fluffy, golden-brown spheres sprinkled with confectionary sugar and plated with strawberries and melted fudge—Rey kept glancing at the door. He did not return.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gdi kylo ben just admit she's hot  
> -  
> SPACEX! How great was that Falcon Heavy launch, guys?!?!?! And that there's an actual space man in a red Tesla Roadster in orbit around our sun??? HIGH-FIVE HUMANITY.  
> 
> 
> Also, in case anyone thinks that I have some grand master plan… I KIND OF DO but I am also making about 80% of the rest of it up as I go, so all your lovely comments are wonderful in keeping me on track and helping me sort through this tornado that I call a brain :)  
> til next time!  
> -[kat](http://skytraveller.tumblr.com)<3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay (new job and real life are kicking me in the butt) and THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR CONTINUING SUPPORT OF THIS STORY!

*

 

 

Somewhere, from beyond the ether, in a place that was neither here nor there—unbounded, as it were, by the constraints of height, width, depth, or even time—there came a voice, and…

 

…it sounded _grumpy_.

 

 _“What,”_ the voice began, with all the gravity in the cosmos injected into that one syllable, _“in all of Gaia’s green gardens was_ that?”

 

A second voice rumbled to life, gruff and unapologetic: _“I don’t see what the big deal is. I didn’t do anything that_ you _didn’t already—”_

Had the first voice been in possession of a corporeal form, then he might have been pinching the bridge of his nose. _“Yes, but at the right time and place! Not in the middle of—"_

_“Oh, so it’s okay when_ you _do it—”_

_“I picked my moment carefully—”_

_“You mean you waited until he was drunk off his ass, liable to fling himself off the roof of his building—”_

_“—and with a specific_ purpose _in mind—”_

_“Which he doesn’t even remember because he was drunk! At least my way, he’ll remember!”_

_“Remember his dead father materializing behind his mother in the middle of Christmas dinner? Yeah, probably, that’s pretty memorable—and pretty expensive, considering all the therapy he’ll need to cope with the fact that he saw his_ dead father materialize behind his mother in the middle of Christmas dinner!”

_“Well, it's not like he can't afford it,”_ replied the second voice, in a manner that might have been accompanied by a shrug.

A drawn-out sigh. _“Anyway, the point isn’t so that he’ll_ remember, _the point is to give him a… a gentle push in the right direction.”_

A long pause, and then the second voice boomed, dripping with sarcasm: _“So, basically, you’re trying to incept him.”_

A longer pause. _“Not, exactly…”_

_“That is the dumbest thing that I have ever heard in my life.”_

Dryly, for neither did water exist in this plane of nonexistence, the first voice intoned, _“Then it’s a good thing you’re dead.”_

 

_“This is the worst idea you’ve ever hard. Even worse than that time you wanted to blow up the—”_

_“ **Patience** ,” _the first voice interrupted, any real bite tinged with amusement. _“These things take time.”_

_“And lord knows we’ve got plenty of that.”_

Both voices were silent for some time, their essences almost fading back into the ether, before the first voice spoke again, this time calmer and more kindly:

 

_“She looked good tonight though, didn’t she?”_

_“Yeah… yeah, she did.”_ The second voice made a coughing sound, despite lacking physiology to accomplish such a task. _“So, what now? Your whole great masterplan seems to be falling apart, don’t you think?”_

_“Sometimes things have to fall apart before they can fall together.”_

_“Wow. That’s deep. Did you get that from a Hallmark card?”_

_“Like I said, old friend,_ patience. _”_

_“Yeah, yeah… if you say so, farm boy.”_

 

 

*

 

 

“What I don’t understand,” Phasma was saying on Christmas morning while Kylo continued to ignore her, sprawled face down across his mattress, vainly hoping that if he did not acknowledge her she would simply go away—he _really_ needed to have a talk with his doorman, “is how you managed to ruin a perfectly good pair of shoes you were wearing for… what, four hours, tops?” When Kylo didn’t respond, she hollered, voice carrying easily all the way from the living room, “I’m not seeing any cufflinks here!”

 

Kylo winced, suffering the consequences of a hangover several days in the making. He opened one eye, groaning into his pillow when he spotted them sitting atop his nightstand. Slowly and reluctantly, he pulled himself up and swiped them, padding out into the living room where Phasma was gingerly holding the mud-caked shoes aloft with a paper towel, turning them every which way as she surveyed the damage. She was wearimg a dress of deep cranberry, cinched at the waist, with a thick, grey-black wool coat draped over her shoulders, her lips a matching red and twisted into a disproving frown.

 

“Did you decide to go for a casual run down a muddy cliff side?” Phasma asked sharply as he set the cufflinks down next to the rest of his borrowed outfit, which she had already consolidated neatly back into their vinyl bags. “Seriously. Did you?” Off his grimace, she merely increased her volume. “ _Oh, I’m_ so _sorry! Am I being too loud?!”_

 

 _Ugh_. He was so not equipped to deal with this right now. “Where’s Hux?” Kylo asked, his voice coming out as a gravelly rasp, his throat dry and parched. His temples throbbed. Already disinterested in the answer, he went to the kitchen to grab a Gatorade and an Advil.

 

“At Mass,” Phasma answered primly, her pale features darkening minutely as she casually added, “with his grandmother.”

 

Anyone else hearing that sentence might have responded with a drawn out _awww_ or _that’s so sweet,_ but those people did not know Hux’s grandmother; she was his only living relative, both of his parents having met their untimely ends due to mysterious circumstances when Hux was fresh out of school, and if it could be said that Hux’s personality resembled vinegar, then this woman could only be described as curdled milk. She was as unpleasant as she was _ancient—_ Kylo had only met her once at a holiday party some years ago, and he was convinced that she was hanging onto life by sheer force of will alone. That, and she _hated_ Phasma with a vengeance, and had purportedly, on more than one occasion, muttered loudly and not at all under her breath that the blonde woman was a _scheming witch_ and _much_ _too_ _tall_ for her _dear Armie._

 

“Ah,” Kylo murmured in understanding.

 

“We’re meeting later for dinner,” Phasma continued, sounding for all the world like she was discussing an upcoming battle and not a holiday meal with her paramour’s family, and Kylo was reminded of why he didn’t mind her company quite as much as the others, why he hadn’t demanded a new stylist like he’d demanded replacements for almost every other member of his team—she was a terrible liar, and he appreciated that straightforward, no-nonsense quality of hers— “This cozy little French place off of—okay, no, _seriously,_ is this a scuff mark?” She pointed an accusing, gold-lacquered fingernail at the very apparent heel-print on his left shoe. “Who stomped you?”

 

Kylo made a face. “No one.”

 

Phasma narrowed her eyes. “This is a women’s size eight heel.” Her eyes lasered in on his corresponding foot, catching a glimpse of the angry, purpling bruise blooming there before he could step behind the counter. “And whoever she was, she got you _good.”_

 

Kylo frowned. “How the fuck can you tell it’s a size eight from the _heel—”_

“A _ha!_ So you were stomped.” She clucked her tongue like a disproving mother hen. “What did you do?”

 

“I don’t understand why you just assume that it was _my_ fault,” Kylo grumbled halfheartedly, even as the memory of irate hazel eyes and snarling teeth flashed through his mind’s eye, and yeah, okay, it was probably his fault, but goddamnit, he was _not_ having a good week, and as his mind continued to run through last night’s footage, he ran a hand over his face to stop it in its tracks, before he got to _that_ part, because it was ridiculous and completely _crazy,_ and not to mention _impossible_ —

 

“Who was it? Who do I need to send flowers to?” Phasma feigned a shocked gasp. “ _Oh,_ don’t tell me it was your mother—”

 

“ _No,_ it wasn’t my mo—”

 

“—but no, that’s not right. Senator Organa has always been a true size five, so it couldn’t be—"

 

“Jesus _Christ,_ Phas—”

 

“—but judging from _that_ shiner, you must’ve really pissed her off—”

 

“You know what?” Kylo interrupted, thoroughly incensed. “I don’t have to deal with this right now. I’ve got shit to do. Just take what you came for and get the fuck out.”

 

Phasma merely arched a brow, taking in his disheveled appearance from top to bottom, hair with last night’s product sticking up at odd angles and the same stained white tee that Kylo had pulled back on from the laundry hamper, both of them knowing full and well that he had zero plans for the day. “Right,” she retorted, dragging the syllable out for longer than necessary. “I’ll let you get back to your _thrilling_ itinerary then.”

 

She gathered the garment bags and swiped the large, yellow envelope sitting on the table across from the elevator, tucking it under her arm. Kylo ignored her in favor of chugging down his Gatorade and pretended not to see her pointedly chuck his ruined shoes in the bin on her way out or her loud and not at all under her breath, _“Merry Christmas, you Grinch.”_

 

*   *   *

 

“Anything else?”

 

“Uhm…” Rey quickly ran her eyes over the paper menu once more. “Yeah, let’s do another one of those potstickers and, uh… some eggrolls. Four—no, six. And… no, that’s all.”

 

“Utensils?”

 

“Yes, please.”

 

“How many?”

 

Rey stared the cashier right in the eye, daring him to judge her. “Just one, thank you.”

 

The cashier—a grumpy looking teenager with the ends of his long hair dyed a bright, acid green and completely unaware of the one-sided challenge he was just issued—returned her stare blankly. “O-kay. Twenty-four ninety-nine. About fifteen minutes.”

 

Rey paid the man, cringing a little bit at spending over twenty dollars for one meal—it was almost a quarter of a day’s paycheck, but she figured she’d earned it. Settling into an empty seat as she waited for her meal, Rey tugged off her scarf, the inside of _Fu’s Garden—_ while looking nothing like a garden, but rather a mishmash of seafoam green chairs, neon signs, and, for some reason, photographs of various, colorful exotic birds decorating the walls—was warm and smelled enticingly of cooking food, a smattering of other New Yorkers seated at the tables tucking into their traditional Christmas Day meals of General Tso’s chicken, salt and pepper fish, and maybe some steamed vegetables so they wouldn’t feel so guilty about all the MSG and grease they were about to consume. The music at _Fu’s_ was always a surprise as well, probably owing to the generational and cultural differences between the owner and her kids; sometimes, it was traditional Chinese music, a medley of operatic vocals and plucked strings, but mostly, it was Golden Oldies. But, one time, Rey walked in as _My Chemical Romance_ was blaring over the speakers—and not any of their mainstream tracks, but _obscure_ MCR, featuring heavy screaming and long, drawn-out guitar riffs, which Rey only recognized because she’d spent an entire evening listening to their old stuff on repeat while working on a lab project with her partner and electrical engineering major, Rose Tico.

 

This evening, it was back to the oldies with the smooth baritone of the King crooning about spending the holiday apart from his lover. At least, until the track abruptly changed and a steady, thrumming bass purred to life, followed by a searing first chord from an electric guitar, holding for a heart-stuttering moment before pitching into a torrent of lightning fast arpeggios and trills and delving headfirst into an angry, disquieting riff that left the listener with a twinge in the gut. It was the kind of music that would have grandmothers clutching at their pearls in alarm and warning against the devil—not that it sounded _bad_. No, quite the contrary; but between the aggressive chord progressions, the hammering drums, and the reverberating bass it was all too… _messy_ , an unrelenting assault on her senses, and Rey—

 

Rey _hated_ it.

 

She frowned, brows furrowing in disproval, lines deepening when she glanced around the diner and discovered that the only others who shared her sentiment were an elderly couple wearing matching holiday sweaters, who’d paused their chopsticks full of vermicelli halfway to their mouths to glare over their shoulders at the cashier, blissfully unaware as he bobbed his head in time to the music and bounced a rubber ball against the wall.

 

 _I guess… it’s not_ terrible. Rey absently tapped her foot to the beat as the intro carried on for another three minutes. _They’re obviously very skilled at their instruments._ She could appreciate that, even though it _had_ been going on for a while—

 

The instrumentals reached a boiling point and then reduced to a simmer as the vocalist’s smooth tenor rose up in a wave of calm and Rey froze, a frisson running through her, every muscle in her body tensing as the tides of the song changed direction without notice, the lyrics dulcet and low, rumbling in the space inside her ribcage. But the unexpected shift was secondary to the shock that she _recognized_ that voice—had identified it almost instantly—and that despite how sweetly it now rang in her ear, she was sure it was that same voice that had been flinging baseless insults at her not twenty-four hours prior.

 

The assault on her ears lasted duration of her wait time, and Rey just sat there stiffly, trying her best to tune it out, _especially_ when a slower song came on and, in rich, velvety notes, Kylo Ren sang of violence and sin and s— _no, nope, not going there—_ and _no,_ her heart was definitely _not_ beating faster by the end of it, like a… like some kind of—

 

The cashier could not have better timing. “Hey, your food’s rea—”

 

Chair scraping back with a loud screech as she darted quickly to snatch the proffered food, Rey muttered a quick _thanks_ to the cashier and was out of there faster than you could say _groupie._

 

*   *   *

 

His phone had been off for the better part of three weeks. When Kylo finally fished it out of the back of his sock drawer and powered it up, the piece of hardware stuttered as it tried to accommodate the sudden onslaught of backlogged information.

 

_107 unread messages. 79 missed calls. 10 voicemails. 283 unread emails._

 

Most of them were from Hux, probably berating him for shirking his duties and increasing his workload as a consequence. Kylo deleted those without even opening them. A slew of work emails: interview requests, magazines begging for a quote about Luke, a few talk show invites. He ignored those as well.

 

A few were from his mother; he did not delete those, but did not open them either, especially when he knew they would all say the same thing— _How are you, Ben? Are you back in the city? Are you eating well? Ben, call me please. Ben, I miss you. Ben, I know that I haven’t been the best mother to you… Ben, please… Ben, Ben, Ben._

 

And one message made him feel as if he’d been doused in ice-cold water.

 

From Snoke. Direct from his personal line, dated earlier this week:

 

_Report to me the first week of January. We have much to discuss regarding your future._

 

The last word pulled at a knot, long twisted in his gut. His _future._ It was a topic that Kylo had tried to broach in the past, but with little success. Snoke would wave him off, as if the very notion of him standing on his own two feet was absurd: _A_ solo _career? —_ Kylo had silently fumed at that most unfortunate pun— _the Knights of Ren without Kylo Ren? No, my dear protégé, you’re not ready._ But that President Snoke wanted to discuss it _now_ and had brought it up himself? The timing of it all made him nervous, made his teeth itch. Could it be that, in his old age, Snoke was finally coming around, was finally ready to loosen the iron grip he had on the reins of Kylo’s career? It didn’t seem very likely but…

 

He reread the line. _We have much to discuss regarding your future._

 

But it was possible.

 

*   *   *

 

The snow did not let up until three days before New Year’s Eve when the sun finally peeked through the clouds, showering the world below in little beams to melt the ice. A palette of yellow, green, brown, and white blurring together outside the window as Kylo eased his foot into the gas pedal of his TIE _Silencer_ , the luxury vehicle aptly named as the engine responded with but a low, barely audible rumble, carrying him swiftly northward, zooming past the arboreal scenery.

 

The last time he visited Mustafar, he’d been a boy of sixteen and still going by Ben, moodily tolerating the impromptu summer trip to _Uncle Luke’s—_ for he’d always been Uncle Luke, even before he was _actually_ Uncle Luke—where he and his mother and father had spent a week doing mundane, family activities across the sprawling acreage, like camping, and hiking, and canoeing, and fucking fly-fishing _,_ and _Ben Solo_ had sulked through the whole ordeal, not realizing that it was the last time that they would all be together like that. Idly, Kylo wondered if he might have appreciated it more at the time if he had known it for what it was. If he might have been nicer.

 

It was always a weird feeling, to come back to a place after being away; those kinds of experiences always seemed to highlight the changes in a person, and how nothing stayed the same. But when the trees cleared, and he pulled up passed the iron-wrought gates, up the cobbled driveway, and the looming lakefront estate of Mustafar came into view, the wave of nostalgia that he’d expected did not come. In fact, he barely recognized the sight before him. This was not the stately and imposing Mustafar of his childhood, this was—

 

 _—a fucking_ dump.

The four-story mansion was overrun with a thick layer of vines, and several windows across the anterior façade were boarded up, haphazardly, amateurishly, and from the outside. There was a huge padlock barring entry from the front door and the roof was missing shingles, likely having been blown off by recent storms, and several of them laid, shattered, strewn across the driveway in crumbly pieces. The whole structure seemed to be shrinking inward, like it had caught a cold and was wheezing, as if the encroaching ivy was slowly sucking the life out of it, or was squeezing it to death, or both—and Kylo could see a rusted metal ladder propped up against the side of the house, where near the top, a pair of gardening shears stuck out from the green leaves, defeated and abandoned, as the victorious vines grew over it.

 

Mustafar had never been Luke’s primary residence, the certifiable hippie of a man preferring to bounce between his humble studio in the East Village and his beachfront bungalow in Southern California, but Kylo had always assumed that the reclusive man would at least have the presence of mind to properly look after his assets rather than let them depreciate into this sorry state. One did not need to be an expert in housing to know that it would cost a small fortune to restore Mustafar to its former glory, and another, unexpected thought hit Kylo—

 

Who in their right mind would tack this financial burden onto a young—and practically destitute, if her living situation was anything to judge from—girl not even out of school?

 

 _Maybe Luke didn’t actually like her after all,_ Kylo mused as he pulled the car to the back, where he knew there was an awning he could park under next to the garden entrance. _Maybe she told him that teaching pottery was a ridiculous thing for a retired musician of his caliber to do or that his conceptual art was stupid and he actually hated her._ That didn’t seem right, but the thought amused him, and he almost chuckled.

 

Next to the garden fence, the backdoor to the estate was left ajar, a line of fresh muddy footprints leading from the melting snow and up the steps, like an image straight out of a fucking murder-mystery novel. His frown deepened as he shifted the _Silencer_ into park and quickly switched off the ignition, thanking the stars above that he’d chosen this car for this trip, the quietest engine on the market. If he was lucky, then the poor bastard inside hadn’t heard him coming, and was about to get very _un_ lucky. It had been a while since he’d punched a man, and longer still since he’d punched a man and had been in the right for doing so. Breaking and entering on what was now _his_ property? That seemed like a pretty good reason, and Kylo was raring to go, fist already clenched at his side as he moved swiftly towards the door, eager to have an easy outlet for this storm that had been building inside of him—just so long as he didn’t beat the shit out of him _too_ hard. _Excessive force,_ and all that.

 

Kylo made it up the steps without making a sound, and through the door jamb, he could see a figure crouching in front of the kitchen door, picking the lock. The second before he burst in, a distant part of his brain registered that the figure was rather _small,_ and that a puffy white jacket with a bright purple beanie might not have been the most _covert_ ensemble for committing felonies—but it was a second too late, because he was already pushing through the door so hard it crashed against the wall with a resounding _bang,_ and—

 

“ _Shit!”_

 

The voice was high-pitched, definitely _not_ male, distinctly accented, and— _wait_ , _I_ know _that voice—_

She whirled around to face him, the recognition scrunching up her features and Kylo was certain that there was a similar expression dawning on his own face, his mouth probably also hanging open as they both shared a moment of mutual _is this really happening right now_ and _what the fuck._

 

But Kylo was the first to recover, his shoulders visibly deflating and his fists unclenching at his side, and when he opened his mouth to speak, there was no anger, but only disbelief and genuine bewilderment.

 

“Rey.”

 

He was standing in front of the only way out, his broad frame taking up almost the entire doorway. She stared at him, frozen and wide-eyed, and for a moment, Kylo was distinctly reminded of a cornered cat, only instead of the hissing and spitting that he’d come to expect from her, she raised her hand—the one that held the _lock pick_ —and waved awkwardly.

 

“Uhm, hi.” Rey chewed her bottom lip, looking not at all fearful, but actually rather sheepish. “This, uh, this isn’t what it looks like.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we have arrived at mustafar! what will these two crazy kids get up to next?? 
> 
> thanks for reading! <3
> 
> -[kat](http://skytraveller.tumblr.com)


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